How To Love a Republican

Reviewed by Paul Birchall
Santa Monica Playhouse
Through December 18

You almost have to feel sorry for the ensemble in playwright Jerry Mayer’s so-called political romantic comedy, about a bizarre love triangle between a lovely girl and her two boyfriends, one a Republican and one a Democrat. Mayer is an amicable upbeat playwright, known for decades of work penning genial gag-filled TV sitcoms, as well as a bustling retirement career penning works for the stage that run like genial gag-filled TV sitcoms. But just after the election this sort of gentle even-handed political debate seems totally against the cultural mood.

Beverly Hills construction company president Tim McCoy (Dan Gilvezan) is a Republican, but he’s also a nice guy, and as proof, his marriage to beautiful liberal Democrat Ruth (Lenora May) has worked for years, in spite of the political gulf between them. Their thoroughly apolitical daughter Margie (Elizabeth Ellson) has spent her life navigating between her parents in their activities — but now she has started to date handsome Lenny (Adam Mondschein), the district’s Democratic Congressional candidate for Congress.

Although this understandably makes mom Ruth happy, it peeves off dad Tim, so he fixes Margie up with Lenny’s opponent, incumbent Republican Congressman Mark (Matthew Wrather). Margie soon finds herself torn between the two. Will she favor the emotional comforts of the softer cuddly Democrat, or the perks that can be had from an ambitious, polished and prosperity-minded Republican?

It may be the era’s zeitgeist, but the play’s unintentionally smug and genial attitude makes you want to scream with rage at certain moments. I’m sure we’ll all feel better in a month or two, but right now — oy, if this were a TV show, you’d throw your remote at the screen. Mayer’s script is some years old, though it has been hammily updated with a couple of tired Trump gags, interspersed within a conversation about President Bush and President Obama.  Perhaps the work might be more successfully staged as a flat out period piece set in the 1970s, when Republicans and Democrats could co-exist on friendly terms.

Mayer’s strengths remain his ability to pepper a story with dynamic one-liners, much the way you’d plop raisins into a bowl of tapioca pudding. But the play makes tapioca look like sirocha sauce, with bland characterizations and a weak “Bridget Meets Bernie” storyline that would embarrass TV writers from 1977.

Director Chris DeCarlo’s production is serviceably brisk, and makes the most of Mayer’s style of glib comedy. He has the gift of turning dull characters into likable figures — it’s definitely a skill to his credit.  Gilvezan, a staple of Mayer’s plays, offers his patented pleasantly warm Alan Alda-esque one-liner spouting turn as the Republican dad, while May is amusingly salty as his Democrat wife.  Klein’s charmingly rumpled nebbish of a Democratic candidate is rather sweet — and, so, unexpectedly, is Wrather’s boyish Republican.

Perhaps six months from now, when things are settled and the public’s corrosive anger has been assuaged, we will (maybe!) be ready to return to this sort of shallow meditation on politics. Just now, though, this is not the time for this show. Even the performers look mildly uncomfortable enacting Meyer’s shtick after our country has taken a right wing turn into Trumpistan. Events have quite simply overpowered this play; along with Civil Rights, Obamacare and the Constitution, it’s another casualty of the 2016 election.

Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4^th Street, Santa Monica; Sat., 7 p.m., Sun., 3 p.m.; through December 18.  (310) 394-9779, ext. 1, or santamonicaplayhouse.org.  Running time: two hours with an intermission.