Reed Birney for whom this fan has noting but praise, once again raises his game and stretches his boundaries with David, a bitter, opinionated, acerbic, highly damaged playwright who maintains what one might categorize as an, abusive, domineering, and permanently corrosive relationship with his impressionable young actress/daughter, Ella (Betty Gilpin). Up to this point I would never have pegged Mr. Birney for such an aggressive, bear-it-all role but his performance here has placed him in an entirely new category in my book. For his next role, I can clearly see him playing Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. If I were a Tony nominator (and this play were actually eligible), Mr. Birney would get my vote hands down.
In this intimate two-hander at the Atlantic Theater Company - Stage II, we find David clearly dominating the conversation around his Upper West Side kitchen table in Act I. When the smoke clears for Act II (quite literally), we find a once shy and awkward Ella all grown up and coming into her own in a dark downtown black-box theater mostly holding one-sided conversations on her cell phone. While she has blossomed in her looks and confidence, what we quickly learn through her actions is a simple, timeless, and chilling lesson - Like Father - Like Daughter.
Don't expect a happy reunion between these two in the end. Like the old phrase goes - What comes around, goes around.
