“Divorce Geriatric Style”
There’s a line in Henry Roth’s 1934 novel, Call It Sleep, where someone says of a play showing the suffering of Samson: “I go to theater to
laugh. Shall I go there and be tormented when life itself is a plague? No, give
me rather a mad jester or the antics of a spry wench.”
 |
| Jane Alexander. All photos: Joan Marcus. |
Grand
Horizons isn’t really that
funny—even with all the geriatric jokes, including a bit about Alzheimer’s!—but
many will find its blend of laughter and schmaltz, lightheartedly directed by
Leigh Silverman (The
Lifespan of a Fact), diverting enough to reduce the stress from the daily
political and viral plagues surrounding us.
Grand
Horizons is an old-fashioned, two-hour, two-act throwback to
the kind of family sitcoms in which Broadway audiences long indulged: a mildly
provocative subject; one-liners and more substantial jokes, the determinedly risqué
ones springing from the most unexpected mouths; dysfunctional relationships that
propel heartwarming pieties about the need for better human communication and the
meanings of love; a surprising, physical coup de théâtre; and a cast composed
of charismatic actors, junior and senior, portraying a situation and
circumstances just recognizable enough from the audience’s own actual or
imagined lives to grab and hold its interest.
 |
| Ashley Park, Michael Urie, Jane Alexander, James Cromwell. |
The subject is quickly established in the brief
opening scene as retired librarian Nancy (Jane Alexander, The Great White Hope) and her husband of 50 years, retired
pharmacist Bill (James Cromwell, Babe:
Pig in the City), prepare to share a meal in their neat, little bungalow (precisely
captured in Clint Ramos’s design, efficiently lit by Jen Schriever). As Bryce
Cutler’s aerial view projection on the show curtain reveals, it’s one of many
cookie-cutter homes just like it in their “independent living community” of
Grand Horizons.
They sit across from one another, pecking at their
food, their wordless, ritualistic behavior based on countless previous
iterations. Finally, Nancy speaks up: “I think I would like a divorce,” to
which the complacent Bill says, simply, “All right.” Blackout.
 |
| Jane Alexander, James Cromwell. |
Cue the family angst as their adult children arrive to
supervise the fallout and contemplate its effect on their own lives. Older son Ben
(Ben McKenzie, TV’s “Gotham”), a stressed-out lawyer, is married to super-pregnant
Jess (Ashley Park, Mean Girls), a
therapist. Younger son Brian (Michael Urie, The
Government Inspector), is an overtly gay theatre teacher so emotionally
fragile and anxious to make his students happy that he’s adapted The Crucible to accommodate 200 actors.
That concept, while amusing at first hearing, is one of several comic
exaggerations reminding us that, no matter how plausible her premise, the
playwright sometimes chooses the big yuck over dramatic plausibility.
 |
| Michael Urie. |
Naturally, the presence of the children in the midst
of Bill and Nancy’s late-life crisis allows Wohl to let various cats (or, in
this play, pussies) out of the bag, as Ben and Brian’s sibling rivalry mingles
with the revelation of long-held marital secrets (or what were thought secrets),
involving romantic dalliances. We even meet the object of Bill’s affections in
the person of the colorfully outspoken Carla (Priscilla Lopez, A Chorus Line).
 |
| Ben McKenzie, James Cromwell. |
Wohl provides her elders a full complement of naughtily
comedic talk about things like sexting, vibrators, and oral sex that strain the
laugh meter’s capacity when spouted, unexpectedly, by Equity members of
septuagenarian and octogenarian distinction.
 |
| Priscilla Lopez, Jane Alexander. |
As is wont to happen in such situations, the children
feel the pressure on their own lives. Ben and Jess are forced to engage in
their own minor marital skirmishes, while Brian finds himself incapable of
following through with a pickup named Tommy (Maulik Pancholy).
 |
| Michael Urie, Maulik Pancholy. |
Desperate as he is for affection, bringing this guy to
his parents’ home, with its paper-thin walls, for some penis to penis activity,
is a bit of a stretch. The same is true of another full-voiced, middle-of-the-night,
living-room convo, with all the lights on.
While the reason Nancy offers for why, despite loving
someone else, she married Bill is reasonable enough, it’s questionable whether,
with all their suppressed resentments, they really never bickered during their half-century
marriage. Most marriages don’t work like that. More common, even in the most
stable marriages, are, at the very least, minor disagreements. Take for
example, the one my wife and I, who celebrated our 57th anniversary only the
day before, had regarding just how Bill and Nancy’s garage is situated so as to
account for the show’s big visual joke (my lips are sealed).
 |
| James Cromwell. |
There’s also an iffy sequence in which Bill, who
thinks he has potential as a standup comic, delivers a routine directly to us
as if breaking the fourth wall, although it gradually looks more like he’s
simply trying out his material for his own benefit, not ours. Still, the bit is
confusing since, if it’s just a rehearsal, in real life he’d be nose to nose
with a wall.
Much as Grand
Horizons is escapist fare, it has its occasionally valuable emotional and
psychological insights into the ups and downs of long-term relationships. For
example, there’s talk of things like the necessity for compromise, how the bonds
of mutual dependence become an unconscious part of a couple’s DNA, and how,
even in their dotage, people can still feel the need to define themselves. Thus
we get Nancy’s preoccupation with salvaging used clothes for refugees, and Bill’s
perception of himself as a comedian. In fact, what may be the show’s funniest
moment springs—not organically out of a discussion—but from Bill’s telling a standard
joke you can actually find online about a group of nuns seeking entry to heaven.
 |
| Ashley Park, Ben McKenzie. |
The ensemble generally delivers the goods. Park is
brightly appealing as Jess; McKenzie is acceptably distressed as Ben; Lopez is
a delicious live-wire as the other woman; Pancholy has comic spark as the one-night stand; Alexander brings intelligence and
humor to her not always believable role; Cromwell tempers Bill’s dyed-in-the-wool
crankiness with quality comic chops; and Urie, as usual, is energetically
expressive, although his mannerisms are becoming increasingly
routine.
 |
| James Cromwell, Jane Alexander. |
Laugh-worthy as much of Wohl’s comedy is, one thing
definitely not is the multiple appearances of illusion-busting, black-clad
stagehands, all their electronic gear in place, who barge in periodically to
make prop shifts. Why, in our technologically advanced day and age, this
antediluvian convention can’t be avoided is a question I’ve asked over and over.
If even this production of Grand Horizons
hasn’t figured out a solution, then maybe Broadway’s horizons aren’t as
grand as one might think.
Second
Stage Theater/The Helen Hayes Theater
220
W. 44th St., NYC
Through
March 1
