“Not Such a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”
Origin Theatre Company, founded in 2002, prides itself on being “the ONLY Theatre company in New York dedicated solely to producing American or New York premieres from Europe.” For 11 years, the company also has presented Irish plays at a city-wide festival called Origin’s 1st Irish Ireland Month.
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| Dan Butler, Richarda Abrams. Photo: Deen van Meer. |
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| Richarda Abrams, Dan Butler. Photo: Deen van Meer. |
Calvani’s program note tells us Beautiful Day demonstrates the need to break down the barriers between
people, especially in our notably divisive times. Unfortunately, the play’s fuzzy
writing, overabundance of topical subjects, and confusing production succeed
more in throwing up new barriers than bringing down the old ones. Moreover, by
setting the play in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, with his three characters all
being Americans of different ethnicities—mixed European, African-American, and
Asian—his play has nothing notably European, much less Italian, about it.
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| Anne Son, Dan Butler. Photo: Deen van Meer. |
Following an inexplicable opening in which director Erwin
Maas has the actors running in place at top speed (a non-helpful device he
repeats at the end), we see what happens after Janet Blount (Richard Abrams), a
middle-aged, black nurse, rushes hysterically into the living room of the obnoxious
Bob Sacco (the nearly as obnoxious Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe of TV’s
“Frasier”). Shouting at the top her lungs, she accuses Bob’s Doberman,
Blaze, of killing her little dog, Pippi. This sets up the appearance of animal
control officer Rachel Huang (Anne Son), a lesbian, assigned to investigate the
case and arrange for its legal outcome.
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| Dan Butler, Richarda Abrams. Photo: Deen van Meer. |
The dialogue exposes us to racism, homophobia, addiction, same-sex
marriage, revenge, atheistic blasphemy, animal welfare, memory loss, and so on.
But the characters are so superficial and the treatment of these issues so commonplace
they seem like dramatic garnish than matters of serious concern.
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| Anne Son. Photo: Deen van Meer. |
Calvani threads many of them them through the hateful
comments Bob continuously screams at Janet and Rachel, as he complains about the
death of his wife, Rose, and the neighborhood’s drug and crime infestation. But
there’s also Rachel’s obsession about finding the dealer who sold drugs to her
wife; Bob’s succumbing to a stroke; the churchgoing Janet’s ministering to him as
she strives to express Christian forgiveness; Bob’s begging Janet to kill him;
and, feeblest of all, Bob’s clumsy attempts at poetry expressing his love for Rose.
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| Dan Butler, Anne Son. Photo: Deen van Meer. |
The chief locales are Bob’s grungy townhouse residence and a yard in the nearby “projects,”
where Janet lives. Calvini’s script suggests a realistic set, at least for Bob’s
deteriorating environment. Oddly, however, director Erwin Maas, in collaboration
with set, lighting, and costume designer Guy De Lancey, instead drapes not only
the stage floor (whose wavy surface the shoeless actors must navigate with
care) and its few furnishings—chiefly a couch and a bench—in white cloth, but
the entire auditorium, seats and floor. It almost feels like the characters in
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard will
soon be arriving to yank off the dust covers as they repopulate the estate.
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| Anne Son, Dan Butler. :Photo: Deen van Meer. |
This minimalist approach, lacking even projections on the
black, blank, upstage wall, seems to be one of Maas’s directorial tics; although
he left the auditorium alone, he used similarly empty designs for Poison and The Hundred We
Are. Given the naturalism of
the performances in Beautiful Day,
the non-realistic setting becomes a distraction, its purpose being unclear, and
the locales not always being clearly distinguishable. Moreover, the lack of
specificity in the environment robs the action of atmospherics that might
otherwise support its emotional values. What happens in Beautiful Day is essentially realistic; it’s not nō theatre.
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| Anne Son, Richarda Abrams, Dan Butler. Photo: Deen van Meer. |
De Lancey’s other contributions are similarly problematic. The
“uniform” he provides Rachel, a brown outfit of matching slacks and jacket, looks
more like a fashionable ensemble tailored to the actress’s elegantly trim proportions
than anything official. When she removes the jacket, she reveals a beautifully
fitted white blouse. And, with lighting on such an abstract set being so
important, one wonders why some scenes are so dull, with actors’ faces needing more
heightening.
Yesterday was indeed beautiful but the same can’t be said of
A Beautiful Day Without You.
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263 W. 86th St., NYC
Through November 25