SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Connecticut
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
A CurtainUp Review
Thinner Than Water
By Elyse Sommer
|
Your mom was the hot mom. Gary’s mom was the fat mom. . .and my mom was the pain in the ass. — Renee, the oldest of 3 half-siblimgs bonded to each other by their unsatisfactory moms' marriages to an even more unsatisfactory father.
|
Elizabeth Canavan asRenee and Deirdre O’Connell as Gwen
(Photo: Monique Carboni ) |
As we listen to the barrage of sarcasm and anger filled exchanges, we learn that the three people in the room are half-siblings. Renee (Elizabeth Canavan) the owner of the home is in her early forties and Cassie (Lisa Joyce) is in her late twenties. The initially silent man whose name is Gary (Alfredo Narciso), is in his mid-thirties.
The playwright manages to pack a lot of family history into that first of her play's thirteen brief scenes. We learn that Renee, Cassie and Gary are bonded unhappily but inseparably by the insecurity and neediness that's their heritage as children of a man who wasn't much of a father to any of them or a husband to their mothers. While two of the three mothers are still living, it seems as if Renee is the one they rely on when there's a problem which, given their life coping skills, is apparently fairly often. Those coping skills, or rather lack of same, handily fit a tweet: Gary is a pot-head who still lives with his mom, Cassie can't commit to a full time job or boyfriend Henry (Aaron Roman Weiner).
The get-together in Renee's home is not to help her celebrate her birthday but to enlist her help in dealing with the father they all disdain. He may have done them and their mothers wrong and be an irascible, compulsive gambler, but he's now in a a coma which is more than likely to kill him.
Love him or hate him, and despite their own unmoored emotional lives, and the watered down blood ties implied by the title, there's no one else to do the right thing. Well, actually, there is. Gwen (Deirdre O'Connell), the woman they heard about but never met, is in the hospital.
While there's no saving Dad from the Grim Reaper, the three siblings' messy lives become somewhat less of a mess through their interaction with various outsiders. Most poignantly, there's Gwen. She is an unjudgmental witness to the threesome's quarrels in the hospital waiting room, just as she was unjudgmental of their father's weaknesses. Most amusingly, there' are Angela (Megan Mostyn-Brown), a mother for whose kid Gary signs up to be a Big Brother and Benjy (Stephen Ellis), Gary's co-worker at a comic book store.
Since Ms. Ross has concocted a rather kooky cast of characters, there are plenty of laughs in what is essentially a tragedy. But anyone even remotely realistic is going to see that even though things end on a happier note than they begin, this isn't exactly a sure to last happy ending. The characters, with their mix of humor and poignancy and the device of someone's dying to launch the plot are somewhat reminiscent, though not as wildly original as one of LABrynth's early, genre busting hits by an emerging playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, Our Lady of 121st Street.
The all-around excellent cast goes a long way to make the play's strengths stand out. Those strengths are at their most muscular when the superb Deirdre O'Connell is on stage. She admits to being a non-stop talker, yet she's also a quiet and all observing presence in that hospital waiting roomn, as when she wryly tells the battling Renee, Cassie and Gary not to let her being there interrupt their bickering ("You all just go right on ahead and do what you need to do. You just keep on being hateful and horrible. You just keep right on just tearing each other to bits. You won’t even know I’m here."). Gwen's genuine warmth and caring are in full bloom come through loud and clear in a subsequent scene with Renee.
Two of LABrynth's virtuoso actors, Elizabeth Canavan and David Zayas, also deliver powerful performances — she as the woman who hates but can't loosen the ties to her blood-thin relations, and he as the husband she will lose if she doesn't. These two and O'Donnell are the play's most fully fleshed out, believable characters.
Unlike some of the more lavish productions during the company's tenure at the Public Theater, Mimi O'Donnell had to handle her first directing gig in a much more modest setup. With a strong assist from her crafts team she's done a great job to create the various locations called for and for easy movement from one to the other. The central playing area turns from a living room into a hospital waiting room with the pull of a sheer curtain; The front of Henry's apartment building, the cafe where Gary and Angela meet and the comic book store where he works are fusslessly arranged around the periphery.
The tiny Cherry Pit theater (some readers may know as the West Bank Cafe) is a good choice for giving this director and playwright a chance to take on new challenges away from the pressure cooker atmosphere of larger uptown venues. Uptown or downtown, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next,
|
Thinner Than Water by Melissa Ross Directed by Mimi O’Donnell Cast: Elizabeth Canavan (Renee), Stephen Ellis (Benjy), Lisa Joyce (Cassie), Megan Mostyn-Brown (Angela), Alfredo Narciso (Gary), Deirdre O’Connell (Gwen), Aaron Roman Weiner (Henry), David Zayas (Mark). Set: Lee Savage Costumes: Bobby Frederick Tilley II Lights: Japhy Weideman Sound: Jeremy J. Lee Stage Manager: Pamela Salling Running Time: 2 hours including intermission LAByrinth Theater Company at the Cherry Pit 155 Bank Street www.labtheater.org 212.513.1080. From 2/08/11; opening 2/15/11; closing 3/06/11. Tuesday-Saturday at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Reviewed by Elyse Sommer at February 12th press preview |
|
REVIEW FEEDBACK Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V): Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email. . .also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review. Visit Curtainup's Blog Annex For a feed to reviews and features as (they are posted add http://curtainupnewlinks.blogspot.com to your reader Curtainup at Facebook . . . Curtainup at Twitter Subscribe to our FREE email updates: E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message. If you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country. |
Slings & Arrows-the complete set
You don't have to be a Shakespeare aficionado to love all 21 episodes of this hilarious and moving Canadian TV series about a fictional Shakespeare Company
