274. THE REALISTIC JONESES
After greatly appreciating Will Eno’s
delightful THE OPEN HOUSE Off Broadway a couple of weeks ago, I was psyched about seeing
his new Broadway offering, THE REALISTIC JONESES, at the Lyceum. Making it even more exciting
was one of the most stellar casts on Broadway this season, any one
of the four actors involved having enough star wattage to power a play on his
or her own. Part of my disappointment at the results is surely because of the disparity between
my high hopes and the uninvolving results.
From left: Toni Collette, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts. Photo: Joan Marcus.
None of the characters are
challenging enough to warrant the kind of performance breakthroughs that allow actors
to show untapped sides of themselves. The situations are not
provocative and groundbreaking, and the play won’t draw much
attention for unusual themes or production values. Many may find interest in Mr. Eno's gently metaphysical intimations about life and death, his sweetly caring concern for people's frailties, or his ability to establish unexpectedly affecting twists and turns in the course of everyday conversation. As realized in the THE REALISTIC JONESES, however, these don't add up to engrossing drama or comedy, and even the presence of Tracy Letts, Toni Collette, Michael C. Hall, and Marisa Tomei failed to make up the balance for me. (Mr. Letts was also in the play's premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2012, which costarred Glenn Fitzgerald, Johanna Day, and Parker Posey.)
Tracy Letts, Marisa Tomei. Photo: Joan Marcus.
A number of major reviewers have found the play and production worth every one of its 90
intermissionless minutes, although the atmosphere
in the theatre when I attended, apart from occasional laughter, seemed pretty reserved. Aside from
the pleasure of the first 20 minutes or so, when the characters are introduced
and we get to bask in the warm talent of the aforementioned artists, a creeping
sense of frustration begins to set in as we realize nothing much is going to
happen, and that all we’re going to get is more of the same semi-absurdist black comedy. When the
payoff, if you can call it that, eventually comes, you wonder, “Is that all
there is?”
Set in “A
smallish town not far from some mountains,” the play first reveals Bob and
Jennifer Jones (Mr. Letts and Ms. Collette) sitting in their backyard and
enjoying the night sky. Their dialogue is a bit off kilter, which creates a
lightly comic atmosphere. Bob is a bit crotchety, his wife conciliatory. Before
things get too far, another couple, John and Pony Jones (Mr. Hall and Ms.
Tomei), barge in, bearing a gift-wrapped bottle of wine. They’ve recently moved into a nearby house and have come to
make friends with their new neighbors, using the fact that they share the same
last name (printed on the mailbox) as an icebreaker.
The two houses, although not
contiguous, are virtually the same, so the dramatic setup
is not unlike that in Lisa D’Amour’s DETROIT, seen last season. David Zinn’s
sparse set, which looks like one of the cheapest on Broadway this season (could
this be related to the stars’ salaries?), consists of the same upstage set of
sliding glass and screen doors to serve for both homes. The backyard area at
stage right is generally reserved for Bob and Jennifer’s home, the kitchen area at
left for John and Pony’s home. A scene in a food market is noted simply by a
table with some goods on it. Tall trees stand at either side of the simple
black drop into which the doors are set. When appropriate, Mark Barton’s
lighting illuminates the theatre’s actual upstage walls, visible above and to
the sides of the black drop.
Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts. Photo: Joan Marcus.
John and
Pony, who are somewhat younger than Bob and Jennifer, are vague about why they’ve
moved here. John says he repairs air conditioning and heating units, but basically
he’s someone who fixes things, like a lamp that the other Jones couple discards and Pony, who is struggling to maintain an online greeting card business, retrieves. There are odd discrepancies in their dialogue, too; someone will
say something queer or surprisingly blunt, or change the subject, or apologize
for something he or she has said, perhaps declaring they didn’t mean it. Nonsequitors
flow like water, but are rationalized or ignored. Mood swings and forgetfulness
are frequent. The only character who seems conventionally normal is Jennifer.
Bob, we learn early on, is suffering from a degenerative neurological disease, but he's in denial about it. His illness is being treated by a local doctor, a leading specialist. This helps considerably in our understanding of why he acts so oddly. But we only learn much later that John has the same ailment, and that he moved here because of the specialist's presence. While Bob is in denial about his illness, John tries to keep it from Pony, out of concern for her discomfort with such matters. Pony's quirky reactions, on the other hand, are attributable to her ultimately self-acknowledged lack of an attention span. This, though, doesn't hold water, as she seems perfectly capable of a sustained conversation when required, and she’s even taking college courses, including one in theology.
Bob, we learn early on, is suffering from a degenerative neurological disease, but he's in denial about it. His illness is being treated by a local doctor, a leading specialist. This helps considerably in our understanding of why he acts so oddly. But we only learn much later that John has the same ailment, and that he moved here because of the specialist's presence. While Bob is in denial about his illness, John tries to keep it from Pony, out of concern for her discomfort with such matters. Pony's quirky reactions, on the other hand, are attributable to her ultimately self-acknowledged lack of an attention span. This, though, doesn't hold water, as she seems perfectly capable of a sustained conversation when required, and she’s even taking college courses, including one in theology.
Once
things are revealed and the four new friends appear to have come to some deeper
understanding of each other, the play ends somewhat as it began, but now with
everyone staring off into the night sky, pondering the imponderable. Apart from Mr. Eno’s clever playfulness
with language, here attributable to mental disease and not to some gently surrealistic
artistic agenda, there’s not much else to grasp onto other than to see four
people striving to communicate, deal with whatever is slowly eating away at their loved ones, and hold on to their personal realities in the face of imminent death. For some, this essentially plotless material may be enough; others, like me, may want more dramatic steak with their potatoes.
The actors form an airtight ensemble, each quite good in their roles, but the material prevents them from offering any surprises. Mr. Letts
repeats the cutting sarcasm he used so effectively in WHOSE AFRAID OF VIRGINIA
WOOLF?, Ms. Tomei offers the cute and slightly ditzy persona she’s played in
other roles, Mr. Hall provides the concentrated edginess he brings to his TV
show, “Dexter,” and the versatile Ms. Collette is any one of a number of
similar characters she’s played in her career. Sam Gold’s direction uses lighting and ominous sound effects (excellently created by Leon Rothenberg), including crickets and the hooting of an owl, to heighten the atmosphere, but, while he evinces fine acting from his players, the material is
not sharp enough to make us wonder, as we leave the theatre, what all the fuss is about.
So few good new plays get done on Broadway one wishes to encourage those that do. But THE REALISTIC JONESES seems built less for the Great White Way than for a quality production in a more intimate environment. On Broadway its verbal eccentricities lack weight and float off like balloons. This is a play about language, and the closer we are to the people caught up in its give and take, the more likely we are to catch the strings before those balloons float away.