"Nest of Cuckoos"
Mental illness has provided
theatrical bread and butter since the Greeks. In recent years, not a season has
passed without several plays about dementia, Alzheimer’s, or the autism spectrum.
And, at least since the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, psychotherapists have been dramatic staples,
usually in supporting roles but often, as in Equus, principle ones. |
| Ed Harris and company. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
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| Ed Harris, Lily Gladstone. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
David Rabe’s
(Sticks and Bones, Streamers) dramatically inert Good for Otto deals with multiple cases of mental illness; despite being set
in a mental health facility, though, it represents no threat to One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Originally
seen in Chicago in 2015, and now in a starry New Group production directed by Scott
Ellis at the Pershing Square Signature Center, it’s based on Dr. Richard O’Connor’s
Undoing Depression. It also shares with “In
Therapy” the idea of a therapist battling his own demons while struggling to
handle the disparate patients under his care.
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| Rileigh McDonald, Rhea Perlman, Ed Harris. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
At the beginning, the central
character, Dr. Michaels (Ed Harris, who can do no wrong even in roles as bland
as this one), laments directly to us that it may be the 21st century in the
land of plenty, but we still must deal with “money problems; family and work
pressure. Autism. O.C.D. Alcohol and drug abuse, sexual abuse. Being young.
Getting old.” But neither Dr. Michaels nor his patients are sufficiently
lifelike or interesting to make an evening in their company especially
illuminating.
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| Amy Madigan, F. Murray Abraham. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
The locale is the fictional Northwood
Mental Health Center in the Berkshires, represented by Derek McClane’s setting
of an all-purpose room painted in institutional green and gray, and
functionally well-lit by Jeff Croiter. Several rolling desk chairs occupy
center stage when needed, as in the therapy scenes; at other times, they’re
sent speeding off into the wings or rapidly revolved for dramatic effect.
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| Nancy Giles, Rhea Perlman, Rileigh McDonald, Ed Harris. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Two rows of the Signature’s Alice
Griffin Jewel Box Theatre have been removed to thrust the stage forward. The
only reason, it would seem, is so they can be replaced by two rows of cheaper
(I hope) upstage seats from which audience members, along with several cast
members, have the privilege of watching the actors’ backs.
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| Amy Madigan, Maulk Pancholy. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
As is so common nowadays, other
actors are seated at either side, ready to quickly join the action when needed.
Kenny Mellman, who plays Jerome, a long-haired, long-bearded patient, also
contributed the show’s original music; once Jerome’s problem with boxes and his
overbearing mother (Laura Esterman) is dealt with, he sits behind an upright
piano. There, he’s sometimes called on to play old-time songs (like “By the
Light of the Silvery Moon” and “On Moonlight Bay”) that Dr. Michael appears to
consider important mood enhancers.
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| Ed Harris, Laura Esterman, Kenny Mellman. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
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| Michael Rabe, Ed Harris, Kate Buddeke. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
The play, if that’s what we must call
it, is little more than three, tedious hours of an interweaving set of brief
therapy sessions introducing the problems of a series of disturbed persons who
come to the center for help. First, we hear from Jane (Kate Buddeke), who tells
of her headaches in the wake of her son, Jimmy (Michael Rabe), blowing his
brains out. She then practically vanishes (but must sit quietly watching) as we
view more extended, if not particularly unusual, cases.
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| Mark Linn-Baker, Ed Harris. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
As the sessions proceed, Dr.
Michaels and Dr. Evangeline Ryder (Amy Madigan), his equally hardworking and
devoted colleague, use their skills to respond to Barnard (the great F. Murray
Abraham, making a shallow role richly satisfying), a depressed, 77-year-old man
with a penchant for philosophically oriented books like I and Thou, The Dancing Wu Li
Masters, and The Tao of Physics;
Timothy (Mark Linn-Baker, sweetly pathetic), a childlike, middle-aged, socially
awkward man preoccupied with his ailing pet hamster, Otto; Alex (Maulik
Pancholy, buried in stereotypical mannerisms and nervous tics), a young, effeminate, gay man
unable to deal with his sexuality; and Frannie (Rileigh McDonald, excellent in
a tough role that could become one-note), a 12-year-old cutter with
suicidal tendencies and a problematic relationship with her worried foster
mother, Nora (Rhea Perlman, sincerely maternal).
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| Amy Madigan, F. Murray Abraham. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
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| Charlotte Hope, Ed Harris. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Meanwhile, Dr. Michaels keeps
drifting off into painful reveries surrounding his memories of his needling mother
(Charlotte Hope, too girlish for the role), who killed herself when he was
nine, and whose ghost keeps haunting him. Fortunately, Dr. Ryder’s personal
issues remain unexamined but Madigan makes her seem about as real as the
undeveloped role could ask for; she makes even Dr. Ryder’s habit of ending her
sessions with “To be continued” sound honest.
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| Rileigh McDonald, Ed Harris, Charlotte Hope. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
Only in one scene, when Dr.
Michaels engages in a frustrating phone call with Jane (Nancy Giles, perfectly
obtuse), an insurance agency bureaucrat, does Good for Otto suggest the stronger play that might have been, one
that more directly exposes and lambastes the inadequacies of our health care
system and its inability to serve the people fairly.
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| Charlotte Hope, Rileigh McDonald. Photo: Monique Carboni. |
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
The Pershing Square Signature Center/Alice
Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 W. 42nd St., NYC
Through April 15
