Linda Vista

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Steppenwolf Theatre Company at the Mark Taper Forum
Through February 17

RECOMMENDED:

Linda Vista is perhaps not a play to see if you’re someone who squirms intensely when naked people on stage engage in realistically simulated copulation and other intimate sex acts. This smart, thorny dramedy by award-winning playwright Tracy Letts, imported from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre to the Mark Taper Forum with the original cast, features a couple of such scenes that are as awkwardly explicit and comical as they can be in real life. Pivotal to the story, they tell us much about the central character and the dangerous dubious choices he makes as he meanders disconsolately through a lonely, purposeless existence.

Directed with a deft hand by Dexter Bullard (who directed the premiere production in Chicago), the story revolves around a choleric 50-year-old man named Wheeler (Ian Barford), a former photographer who now earns a living repairing cameras in a small shop in San Diego. When we meet this guy (whose first name is Dick but who prefers people use his surname), he’s moving into a nondescript apartment after sleeping in the garage of the house he once shared with his soon-to-be ex-wife and teenage son. Wheeler’s assisted with his boxes of “stuff” by his longtime pal Paul (Tim Hopper), a congenial and supportive friend who’s known him since they were undergrads in Chicago. The riffs and musings that go down in this first scene reveal a clear portrait of the man — an intelligent, unhappy person with a contrarian streak and a superior attitude, whose frank assessments of people and the world we live in alienate most everyone who meets him.

But Wheeler, while self-deprecating, also sees himself as someone with integrity, and tries to maintain a personal standard of candidness and non-compromise — at least initially. When he meets Jules (Cora Vander Broek) on a blind date that Paul has set up, he’s perfunctorily courteous and ready to wrap it up early until she unexpectedly develops an interest in him. Jules is a bright, caring woman, and their relationship flourishes for a brief time until Wheeler self-destructively breaks his own code of behavior and mixes it up with the 20-something Minnie (Chantal Thuy), a pregnant neighbor with limited intellectual horizons and pinkish hair who’d sought his help after a fight with her abusive boyfriend.

Linda Vista is written for a mature, urban demographic. Folks who may have gone through the mill with relationships, who dislike Trump and everything he stands for (Wheeler goes off about him early on) and who connect with the material’s many cultural allusions, whether it be jazz or old movies or defunct comic scripts, are most likely to be its most appreciative audience.

But within that framework, this is a distinctive and insightful work. It’s true, the main turning point in the plot comes a bit too speedily and isn’t wholly convincing — but on the other hand there’s Letts’ special gift for depicting flawed individuals in a way that makes us empathize and relate. It’s not only Wheeler whose nuances emerge carefully honed – at times he seems to have been almost turned inside out – but also the people around him: Hopper’s Paul, who when asked for advice deftly demurs because he knows it will, stupidly, be ignored; his wife Margaret (Sally Murphy), who calls Wheeler out for turning a cold shoulder on his troubled son; Jules, who takes a chance on a very dicey dude while she herself is fresh off a recent and dismal breakup. And then there are Minnie and Anita (Caroline Neff), younger women each in their own way worldly-wise, and much too cynical before their time.

While the writing is astute, the production would not be the success it is without Barford, who seems born to play this beleaguered character with a nimble tongue. The supporting players are adept and authentic across the board, their collective performance contriving a mirror for human conduct, mostly for worse and occasionally for better.

Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown; Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.; through Feb. 17. Centertheatregroup.org or (213) 628-2772. Running time: approximately two hours and 40 minutes with an intermission.