Nanci Kelham and Eric Toms (Photo by Katerina Kim Podell)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Beverly Hills Playhouse
Thru Oct. 5
When a new play runs in excess of two-and-a-half hours, you expect something at least marginally epic.
Unfortunately, My Dad’s Kid, currently in its world premiere at Beverly Hills Playhouse, is no War and Peace. Playwright Eric Toms stretches out what should have been a sweet, character-driven two-hander into a protracted muddle that overstays its welcome by a good hour.
That’s a shame because the premise is promising: Greg and Pamela are half-siblings who reconnect after two decades. Pamela, a 29-year-old corporate attorney from New York, camps in her older brother’s shabby Los Angeles apartment while interviewing for a job. The two are divided by more than the gap in their ages. Pamela adores their father, a jet-setting dealmaker who travels the world engineering multi-billion dollars deals. On the other hand, Greg remembers his dad as a criminally connected conman who deserted him and his mother and left him emotionally scarred.
Initially, it appears that these two have absolutely nothing in common; Greg, a one-hit-wonder writer who has never replicated the success of his first novel, has lapsed into indigence and artistic torpor, while the relentlessly driven Pamela is determined to climb the corporate ladder by any means necessary. Ideological opposites who hold one another in contempt, they struggle to reconcile their antithetical views. And of course, by play’s end, they have found loving companionship and redemption in their life-altering sibling bond.
Toms, who plays Greg, is well-balanced by Nanci Kelham as Pamela. Both resonate as lonely people at a proverbial crossroads who spur one another to jumpstart their stalled lives.
Much of the dialogue zings with humor. There’s simply too much of it. The action is unnecessarily chatty and discursive, particularly the interruptive scenes of Greg reading from his first novel. Granted, those readings ultimately shed light on a trauma from Greg’s past, but surely this could have been accomplished in exposition.
Director Allen Barton, who is also credited as dramaturge, delivers a competent staging. However, a dramaturge’s mandate is to help synthesize existing material, and in this, Barton fails. The fact that he is also the owner of the Beverly Hills Playhouse begs the issue: Did this become an in-house indulgence that passed under the radar of a more discerning eye? If so, another shorter and more precise draft could help My Dad’s Kid achieve the promise that currently eludes it.
Beverly Hills Playhouse, 254 S. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m., thru Oct. 5. www.bhplayhouse.com Running time: two hours and 40 minutes with an intermission.
