6 Rms Riv Vu

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Sierra Madre Playhouse
Through September 6

Photo by Gina Long

Written by Bob Randall (nee Stanley B. Goldstein), 6 Rms Riv Vu opened on Broadway in 1972, with Jerry Orbach and Jane Alexander as strangers who meet in an empty apartment and cannot decide whether or not to have an affair. The production ran for 247 performances and earned Randall a Drama Desk Award for most promising new playwright – which is rather startling, given how creaky this play is (and goes to show just how much – or little – professional critics really know).

The title refers to an ad run by real estate agents in the newspaper: It translates to mean a 6 room apartment with a view of the Hudson River, here all the more desirable because this one is rent-controlled.

The stream of would-be tenants include Paul (Jeremy Guskin) a copywriter with (extremely) faint aspirations to greater things, and Anne (Lena Bouton) an attractive, sociable housewife who seems never to have questioned her role as dutiful wife and mother, despite the cultural revolution raging about her. Each is unaccompanied by their spouse. When the apartment’s interior doorknob goes missing, the two find themselves trapped together in the space. They call desperately for help and then, realizing they’ll have to wait, begin to engage in small talk that segues into curiosity and then, on Paul’s part at least, desire.

The crux of the comedy is the trepidation with which these hitherto monogamous individuals confront their sexual attraction. Randall’s script depends on the audience’s empathy – and willingness to laugh – at a nice, neurotic, middle-class Jewish guy like Paul, as he timidly pays court to the propriety-minded Anne, a “good girl” as she refers to herself while lamely fending off his flattering advances.

The problem is that while “to cheat or not to cheat” may be a theme that transcends time and place, these particular characters and the dialogue they employ do not. Their small-talk pretty much replicates the chitchat of a particular class of urbanites at a particular time in the 20^th century. In short, this is terribly dated stuff.

And boring. Nowhere is there the sort of clever language that more adept writers of comedy embed in their work. While the situational humor might be pulled off by a comedy talent extraordinaire – a performer whose mere entrance on stage or bodily gesture can make you laugh – neither Guskin nor Bouton nor anyone else in the supporting ensemble possess that range of talent. They work very hard but their game efforts, under Sherrie Lofton’s direction, yield contrived and stagey results.

Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m.; through September 6. (626) 355-4318, sierramadreplayhouse.org