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2 Across
Reviewed by Reza Vojdani
Santa Monica Playhouse
Through Sept. 28.
Santa Monica Playhouse’s 10th anniversary production of octogenarian playwright Jerry Mayer’s comedy looks to examine the lives, ambitions, and self-justifications of two colorful characters through the metaphor of a crossword puzzle. Chris DeCarlo directs.
If you’re a big fan of 1980s sitcoms, the play might be right up your alley. In a chance encounter on an early morning BART train, a man (Kip Gilman) and a woman (Wendy Michaels) bond over a shared appreciation of the New York Times crossword puzzle. What begins as an anonymous encounter quickly turns into an intriguing ride of discovery and self-reflection for both passengers as they get to know one another through anecdotal digressions from their attempts to finish their puzzles.
The play’s comedic bones are apparent from the start. Gilman plays a witty, happy-go-lucky, middle-aged man who’s in a seemingly happy marriage and bouncing around between part time jobs. Opposite him, Michaels is a calculating, to-the-point psychologist who means business, and treats every moment as seriously as if she were defusing a bomb. The classic “opposites butt heads” setup is serviceable, with most of the jokes lying within cleverly timed retorts from one character to the other. Michaels and Gilman do the best with what they’re given; the characters are not terribly complex due in equal parts to the nature of the comedy, the play’s tone, and the entry of these types of characters into the archetype category long ago – despite a few contemporary annotations and references thrown in.
This renders the comedy a kind of antique. The progression of the encounter falls in line with so many romantic comedy plotlines from stage and screen in the last 30 years. Furthermore, the characters themselves are not terribly gripping: While Michaels’s psychologist comes off as overly harsh or rude at some points, Gilman’s benign character-in-transition appears ill-at-ease.
What we’re left with is a play that has missed its own Golden Age. The cute, simple story elicits a few laughs without taking many risks, with a setup that would’ve felt fresh in 1985.
Not every play needs to take risks or challenge the audience, but a payoff for the risks that are taken would be a pre-requisite for any comedy, and it’s those payoffs that are lacking here.
That said, 2 Across is nonetheless an endearing snapshot into a comedy genres of prior decades. Like the crossword puzzles that its characters try to solve, like any crossword puzzle in any newspaper today, the play is facing a harsh test of time.
Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4th St., Santa Monica; Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 3:30 p.m.; through September 28. (310) 94-9779 showclix.com/event/3858404
