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Photo by Don Kellogg

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Three Changes

This Nicky Silver play is darkly funny, at times eerie, and overall a strange brew of ideas over at Playwrights Horizons.   It seems that family is the main focus of the playwright and a twisted tale sure does unwind.  

Dylan McDermott (Nate) and Maura Tierney (Laurel) are the main characters who at the beginning, live what appears to be a normal, upper middle class married life on the Upper West Side.  Along co

mes Scott Cohen (Hal), the long lost brother, and his boy-toy hustler, Brian J. Smith (Gordon) and the entire family unit as we see it begins to unravel before our eyes (um, i have to comment once again at how gorgeous Brian J Smith really is - clothes on or off it doesn't matter!)  We immediately find out that Nate is having an affair with Steffi (Aya Cash) and it all goes to hell in a hand-basket from there.

Odd theatrical tricks are employed (very strangely) mostly by Steffi.  We see the cast break the 4th wall upon occasion to narrate the end of a scene or tell the rest of the story to the audience. Was it touching or weird?  Can't be sure.   

In the end, the entire intent of the show was a commentary on how far people go when it comes to family.  In this case, absurdly far.  I won't ruin it for you.  If you do go - you'll probably walk out with a feeling that you #1, have to think some more, and #2 are slightly annoyed that you sat thru the entire play and got the ending you did.