Ian Riegler and Michele McGregor (Photo by Kirstin Stancato)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Theatre 40
Thru Feb. 16
RECOMMENDED
All’s fair in love and real estate. And when it comes to properties, square footage determines value, no matter how ill-designed or disruptive a new mega-mansion may be to the neighborhood.
Former architect-turned-real estate agent Raymond (Mark Stancato) is bucking that trend. Raymond has a deep appreciation for vintage houses, but when he becomes the listing agent for Grace House, his love for the 1925 “modernist masterpiece” grows into obsession. What begins as professional admiration spirals into a battle for the very soul of the house.
Listing, playwright Russell Brown’s world-premiere play at Theatre 40, starts with a strong foundation, but its intriguing premise is undone by a convoluted plot that hangs on too many disparate stories,.
When it comes to protecting the legacy of Grace House, Raymond and Alice (Mouchette van Helsdingen), the owner who has lovingly restored the house’s period features, are very much on the same page, even going so far as to put a rider in the contract to prevent any buyer from making changes to the property for fifteen years. But when Alice dies unexpectedly, her obnoxious and ill-mannered son and heir, Eli (Tack Sappington) — who has two baby mamas and pressing bills — eliminates the rider for a quick sale.
Complications arise when Raymond fails to present Eli with the full-price offer from married Black television writers Cindy and James (Nakasha Norwood and Sherrick O’Quinn), opting instead to sell to Lawrence and Barbara (Ian Riegler and Michelle McGregor), a couple that promises to preserve Grace House in its pristine state. But when Cindy and James’s real estate agent Andre (Tamir Yardenne) learns that Raymond has sold the house for $100,000 under asking, he angrily confronts him, threatening to have his real estate license pulled for not presenting his clients’ offer to the seller, as required by law.
That confrontation between Andre, an ardent advocate for housing opportunities for people of color, and Raymond, the passionate preservationist who wants to protect the house at all costs, is a superbly crafted dialectic that treats complex social issues from both sides, with the Black Andre challenging the White Raymond’s elitist status quo. However, why Eli’s baby mamas happen to be Black and why Grace House is ultimately sold to a Jewish couple by its Jewish owners seems happenstance — not specifically germane to the plot.
Neither are the play’s flashbacks to 1925, where we are privy to the ill-fated affair between Jewish architect Brunner (Bradley James Holzer), the designer of Grace House, and Harriet (Katyana Rocker-Cook), wife of crude, anti-Semitic millionaire Arnold Grace (Michael Gabiano). Those scenes, which ultimately descend into bathos, seem all the more misplaced, considering they could be entirely elided without any significant impact on the plot.
The play’s segue into the supernatural, enhanced by Nick Foran’s excellent sound design, is yet another intriguing element that shows the playwright at his best. However, director Tom Lazarus, who otherwise stages with a fair degree of competency, blunders badly in the final scene by employing silly slapstick blocking that distracts from Raymond’s moving exhortation against the cultural depredations wrought by profit-driven greed. This robs the moment of its intended emotional impact.
Despite its flaws, Listing remains an engaging production with sharp dialogue, compelling social commentary, and a needed exploration of the delicate—and often contentious—balance between preservation and progress.
Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr. in the Mary Levin Cutler Theatre. Thur.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. thru Feb. 16. (310) 364-0535. http://theatre40.org Running time: 2 hours with an intermission.
