Play (2008)
by Tracy Letts
Directed by Spiro Veloudos
Lyric Stage Company
Boston
January 6 – February 4, 2012
Scenic Design: Matthew Whiton, Costume Design: Mallory Frers, Lighting Design: Shawn Boyle, Sound Design: Arshan Gailus, Fight Choreography: Hannah Husband, Production Stage Manager: Maureen Lane, Assistant Stage Manager: Eliza Mulcahy
With Steven Barkhimer (Max Tarasov), Karen MacDonald (Officer Randy Osteen), De’Lon Grant (Officer James Bailey), Beth Gotha (Lady Boyle), Will LeBow (Arthur Przybyszewski), Omar Robinson (Franco Wicks), Christopher James Webb (Luther Flynn), Zachary Eisenstat (Kevin Magee), Steven James DeMarco (Kiril Ivakin)
Arthur Przybyscewski (Will LeBow) is a Polish-American, sixtyish, balding, pony-tailed Vietnam era draft-resister who runs a small, unadorned family-owned Chicago donut shop. Largely unsatisfied and nursing old wounds, Arthur finds it difficult to take a step, even in the obvious direction of Officer Randy Osteen (Karen MacDonald) who yearns for him to do so. In walks Franco Wicks (Omar Robinson), an African-American kid in his early twenties who seeks employment and has all the energy and drive that Arthur lacks. He also has hidden talents which fit in perfectly with some of Arthur’s own underutilized resources. But Franco has hidden complications. As the plot develops, the intersection of talents, conflicts, resources and interdependencies tightens, turning to a pointed, but satisfying, end.
Steven Barkheimer as Max, Christopher James Webb as Luther
Photo by Mark S. Howard, courtesy of Lyric Stage Company
In this wonderfully written and well constructed play, the characters and scenes are completely believable, and the action builds in a logical, full and vibrant, way.
The scene at first seems commonplace: just a rundown donut shop run by a passive middle-aged guy. But, gradually, as the characters enter and the networks between them develop, the potential tragedies multiply and loom.
Photo by Mark S. Howard, courtesy of Lyric Stage Company
This is a very funny play at the same time that it nurtures its multiple intersecting tragedies.
Without turning sentimental in its resolution, it offers a satisfying completion. Neither too sweet nor too bitter, it is stark and perfect, leaving the audience with a kind of stunned awareness that great, irredeemable losses can lead to even greater discoveries.
I really knew nothing about this play when I went to see it, not even realizing that its author, Tracy Letts, was the author of the acclaimed August: Osage County, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 2008. Nor was I sure that it was even a dramatic piece; seriously ill-prepared, I thought that I was perhaps going to see a kind of fun food show. Boy, was I wrong, and what a great and stirring couple of hours this turned out to be.
With the changes that have occurred at the American Repertory Theatre in the past several years since Diane Paulus took over as artistic director, members of its long-time repertory company have been filtering out to perform in other theatres in Boston. In this performance, two of those ART alumni, Will LeBow and Karen MacDonald, fill central roles, providing a wonderful treat.
Photo by Mark S. Howard, courtesy of Lyric Stage Company
LeBow embodies the central role of Arthur with a perfect combination of laid-back ease, dissipation and hidden turmoil. He wears his aging pony-tail with a kind of dutiful alienation while responding to the impulses, spurred on by Franco and Randy, to move beyond. At one point, he rattles off a list of writers’ names and we are shocked; LeBow carries it off perfectly, and we begin to see the fire within the loser. When he gets to finally show his stuff, he does it with a force that is at once heroic and pathetic; and we cheer for him. At the culmination, he shows the capacity to confront things and to become fully heroic in an unexpected way.
Karen MacDonald as Randy is vulnerable in a bumbling but charming way and makes the perfect foil for LeBow’s Arthur. In other roles she has sometimes tended towards broader and brasher portrayals, but here she offers a charming subtlety that mixes in appealingly.
Photo by Mark S. Howard, courtesy of Lyric Stage Company
It is also great to see other talented actors from the wider Boston theatre scene. Omar Robinson (Franco Wicks) and Steven Barkheimer (Max Tarasov) were both recently in the Actor Shakespeare Project’s wonderful Twelfth Night.
Omar Robinson had a limited role in that production, but truly shines in this one. He is brash, forceful and appealing, with a gutsy charm. And when, as plot lines stretch to the breaking point, he responds convincingly.
Steven Barkheimer, as the Russian owner of a neighboring store, has a seductive directness that translates effectively into the dramatic third dimension of the plot; he also carries off the Russian accent quite well. He is a talented comic actor (as very evident in Twelfth Night), but, in this performance conveys just the right amount of mysteriousness and danger as well.
De’Lon Grant (Officer James Bailey) provides efficient support as Randy’s partner. Beth Gotha (Lady Boyle) is touchingly disoriented as the disenfranchised devotee of Arthur’s donuts. Christopher James Webb (Luther Flynn) and Steven James DeMarco (Kiril Ivakin) are appropriately imposing as forces behind the thrones.
This is a wonderful production of a wonderful play.
Spiro Veloudos, the director, routinely pulls off magic at the Lyric Stage, and, in this case, it is of a particularly striking and stirring kind.
– BADMan
Dear Boston Arts Diary (BAD!) I had the good fortune of attending this performance with the esteemed reviewer and I share his responses to this play of subtleties. It would be too easy to see the characters and situation as familiar rather than the setting of a transformative battlefield in which the battered are revealed in their own terms as capable of action and self-restoration. There are no easy ways out of troubled situations–there are demons real and imagined that have to be dealt with–a fumbling fight scene is perfectly realized as people who are unaccustomed to fighting might play it out (resorting to stacks of plastic cups to pummel one’s opponent!). There is great wit and compassion in the portrayal of broken dreams and seemingly insurmountable obstacles and in the hands of such an articulate writer, director and actors, the characters are able to discover some of their power with which to move on. Thanks to all for bringing this Splendid play to Boston–as for the donuts themselves, the reviews are not in yet.