111.
STRAIGHT WHITE MEN
The eye-catching title of Young Jean Lee’s new play,
STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, is something of a red herring. Perhaps a more accurate
title would be SOME STRAIGHT WHITE MEN or FOUR STRAIGHT WHITE MEN. Lee’s title—assuming
it relates only to Americans of that description—suggests something universal
about a human subset that the very well-performed play fails fully to either
exemplify or clarify. A multi-award winning Korean-born playwright of
considerable stature who’s best known for her nonlinear experimental plays,
which often examine issues of identity politics, Lee turns in this play—now at
the Public Theater’s Martinson Hall—for the first time to a linear,
naturalistic form.
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| From left: Gary Wilmes, Pete Simpson, James Stanley, Austin Pendleton. Photo: Julieta Cervantes. |
The visitors are the middle son, Jake (Gary Wilmes), a
banker, recently divorced, with kids of his own, and the youngest, Drew (Pete
Simpson), an unmarried college teacher (one four-hour class a week) who writes novels
on political themes, and whose positive experience in therapy leads him to
recommend it for Matt. Aside from brief scenes where the dialogue engages with
personal and social issues of white privilege, you’d never guess from their
incessant adolescent hijinks, profanity (they especially love to throw the word
“dick” around), and crude horseplay that they were (apart from the rudderless
Matt) accomplished professionals. Ed, for his part, is a quietly bemused
spectator to their childish behavior, not always getting it, but never raising
his voice. He serves as the essentially neutral moderator when the play’s central issue comes into focus.
This happens when, as the family is eating Chinese take-out, Matt begins weeping (if only briefly); the play now begins to deepen as
Drew reaches out to uncover the source of Matt’s unhappiness, drawing the
others into the conversation and, if only sporadically, igniting something of a
discussion drama. Matt, for all his alleged brilliance (none of it ever
demonstrated), can’t explain his sadness or his
loser’s inability to use his gifts to move on in life. The causes of his unassertiveness
are hard to grasp, and even he can’t articulate them, making his unanswered dilemma
the play’s biggest question. To help give Matt the confidence he seems to lack,
Ed stages a mock interview, as if hiring Matt for a job, but Matt handles it
poorly, even after trying to emulate Jake’s performance when he demonstrates the
proper way to do it. In the end, Ed’s forced to make a difficult, if belated
decision, about his son.
The play has lots of vivid activity and offstage music
(some by Chris Giarmo, with sound design by Jamie McElhinney) as the brothers
roughhouse with each other; everyone dances wildly (movement
is by Faye Driscoll) at one point to loudly thumping music (with Matt doing comically
robotic movements), but this doesn’t make up for an essentially inert dramatic
structure. STRAIGHT WHITE MEN wants to confront issues of white privilege (Drew
and Jake even play a version of Monopoly their late mother cleverly adapted
into a game called Privilege), but, a few moments aside (some of it related to
that board game), little of it goes very deep nor does it demonstrate much that
might not also be associated with nonwhite, non-straight, non-male behavior, although the male component is probably the most incisive. Generalizations are fun, but what do they really prove?
Ms. Lee also serves as her own director, which works
well enough for the acted scenes. However, this is 2014 and it’s time for directors
to recognize that if you’re going to stage a naturalistic play whose action
must be interrupted for scene changes, you should either use a curtain, dim
your lights to near darkness, or choreograph your actors to cover the shifts.
Bringing a handful of black-garbed stagehands, headsets and battery packs in
place, onto a barely dimmed stage won’t do if you wish to sustain any
sense of illusion.
Austin Pendleton gives a convincingly paternal
performance as the easygoing Ed; seeing him amidst the fairly strapping actors playing his sons
reminds us that tiny acorns can produce mighty oaks. Each
of the sons is believable, but the sum total of their performances still doesn’t
enlighten this straight white man about his own condition. Perhaps, in Young Jean
Lee’s eyes, that likely is itself part of the problem.
STRAIGHTWHITE MEN
Public
Theatre
425
Lafayette Street
Through
December 7