Looming Large
You know what Richard Greenberg could use? A dose of Off-Off-Broadway. With the world premiere of The House in Town at Lincoln Center Theater, we've got signal flares that the playwright might be writing himself out, that he needs a good place to regroup. This season: A Naked Girl on the Appian Way (about multiethnic incest) and Three Days of Rain (a revival, tackling how the baggage of the past inevitably becomes the baggage of the present). In recent years: Take Me Out (homosexuality, baseball and America); The Violet Hour (time-bending and truth-telling). Everything is a big, intriguing idea to the prolific Greenberg, who plays his characters like fine violins-not a talent to be squandered.
Not that Greenberg is like the famously talent-squandering Clyde Fitch, who wrote 62 plays between 1890 and 1909, many delighting audiences and most enraging critics. But lately it seems Greenberg is as profligate as Fitch-does he really have so much to say?
Take The House in Town, which says that, as ideas, marriage, love and sex were as fungible in New York in 1929 as today. Language and gender roles were different, of course, but slice it however you will, the coquettishness of Amy (Jessica Hecht), the lady of a certain brownstone on a part of West 23rd Street called Millionaires Row, is suspect. Childless, she's been in a sexless marriage with Jewish businessman Sam Hammer (Mark Harelik) for years. At the couple's New Year's Eve party that begins the play are Con and Jean Eliot (Armand Schultz, Becky Ann Baker), a nouveau riche doctor and his wife, and Christopher (Ben Bittner), the newly orphaned, shy and awkward teenage son of one of Sam's employees. In one act, Sam will develop an unusual interest in Christopher, Amy will convince herself and Jean that she's pregnant at last and nothing will resolve the way you think.
In fact, what Greenberg has cooked up for these characters is so deliciously clichéd that the actors sink in their teeth like sharks to flesh. Hecht has one of those whispery, Katherine Helmond-like voices that ask you to believe all she says, no matter how nutty, and the actress never makes a dishonest gesture. Harelik, too, never telegraphs an untrustworthy air. Baker's clipped, 1920s voice makes for a great contrast with Hecht, who late in the play, when the stakes are high, has a moment with Schultz that's cruelly thrilling. As Christopher, Bittner's brittleness and timidity are also oddly moving.
A dose of working Off-Off-Broadway-anyplace he can forget the pressure of being produced by a high-profile nonprofit theatre-might let Greenberg recharge, find a new bag of tricks from within himself. For one thing, writing characters that self-actualize beautifully doesn't necessarily mean you have to ramp up their erudition-how believable is Amy's knowledge of architecture; her preoccupation with anarchy; or her recurrent anti-Semitism, which plays peek-a-boo with us during the play? While Amy has every reason to boot Sam out of the house, Sam slamming the door in the end rings a bell: Nora slamming the door on women's enslavement to men at the end of A Doll's House. What's the connection?
To convey time and place, Doug Hughes' elegant direction relies subtly on John Lee Beatty's simple and sumptuous set, Brian MacDevitt's tastefully arranged lighting pools and Catherine Zuber's chic costumes. As noted, Hughes also draws out some well-motivated, deeply rich performances. He apparently has yielded to Greenberg, though, with his staging of one scene-between Sam and Christopher-that's not only misleading but tips the play into melodrama. Fitch couldn't have written it better himself.