The Country House

A new play just arrived on Broadway courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club and award winning playwright Donald Margulies. It's a dash of classic play, a dash of naughty, and a dash of funny.  Add it all up and you have a fairly solid run at a family drama.

It didn't bowl me over.  Those dashes I mentioned, well, a few could have been tablespoons or half-cups.  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't compelling.   Perhaps it will grow tighter with time as I saw an early preview, but my gut tells me there just isn't enough to draw the audience much past the front door of the fantastic country house (Sets: John Lee Beatty) we see on stage.

Blythe Danner (Anna Patterson) is the matriarch of the family in question here.  The family is mostly actors.  Her daughter is dead and it's a year afterward and she's getting the clan together at the country house in Williamstown (they are actors, remember) for the the anniversary of her death including her son (Elliott Cooper) Eric Lange, her son-in-law (Walter Keegan) David Rasche and his new girlfriend (Neil McNally) Kate Jennings Grant, her granddaughter (Suzie Keegan) Sarah Steele, a hunky young Hollywood actor (Michael Astor) Daniel Sunjata.

There are a few twists and turns in the plot, an inside running joke about the theatre and actors, and of course a little naughty intrigue all surrounding that gorgeous and successful Hollywood actor.  Well cast, but it was a studio sized result when I was expecting a classic 6 or more given the level of talent on the stage.

The Commons of Pensacola

I kind of expected more once I got the gist that this was a Bernie Madoff kind of story.  Wife who may or may not have known what her convicted criminal (we're to assume financial fraud that wiped out other families) husband did, daughters who are struggling with moral choices around coming to grips with their new-found family situation, media always at the gates of your life angling for a story... and the list goes on.

Sarah Jessica Parker (Becca), Blythe Danner (Judith), and the incredibly handsome Michael Stahl-David (Gabe) respectfully run through the choppy storyline yet I felt very little emotion and even a few holes in their logical story.

Did she know?  One will never really quite know but the assumption you are gently pushed toward is that of course she must have suspected, but never fully let that suspicion develop for fear of what she might lose.  One daughter takes the moral high ground.  The other tries harder to gain insight, twisted further by her position of being dirt broke and homeless and suddenly having access to something she just found out about.

Penned by the actress turned playwright, Amanda Peet, it was a quick drive through the issues, but very little more.  Like even the best Chinese food, it was delicious, but left me hungry and wanting something more an hour later.

Suddenly Last Summer

Mrs Venable and Miss Holly rule the stage in a battle of wills at the Laura Pells Theater on West 46th. Blythe Danner and Carla Gugino weave Tennessee Williams' scandalous tale originally written in the early 20th century.

Violet and Sebastian - mother and son. What dark secret does this relationship hold? Why will Violet, the very rich and protective mother, go to the extreme of sending her niece to a mental hospital for a lobotomy?

Of course the answer lies in the fact that Sebastian was gay. His mother hid the secret all his life, but let him live his life in secret at home and through their worldly travels. But when he travels with his cousin Catherine instead of his mother this past summer things unravel. He's not able to deal in the same way he would have under the protective wing of his mother and ultimately that change is the cause of his horrific death on the street while traveling. The elderly Violet refuses to let this story get out and ruin her son's (and her) reputation, but her niece is "blabbing" the story all around. Violet's remedy is to seek out (and bribe) a doctor - (played rather stiffly by Gale Harold) who has a new procedure - the Lobotomy - to shut her up.

We learn about all the characters in Act I, and in Act II, when the doctor arrives, we ultimately hear the long, dramatic story of this past summer's vacation taken by Sebastian and Catherine in a poetic, dramatic, and poignant monologue. The crescendo, highlighted perfectly by a dramatic lighting effect, is, of course, the horrible death of Sebastian.

In what could only have been a shocking ending in its day - is the doctor's simple admission that perhaps the whole story could indeed be true, that Catherine is indeed not crazy, and not a candidate for the extreme procedure. (Lights Out).