False Solution

Reviewed by Paul Birchall

Isn’t it wondrous the theater is such a crucifer of diversity. Along with plays for children, for ethnic audiences and plays for particular ages, we now have this grand opus by Oren Safdie, aimed towards architects.

Architects, you say? 

Well, one suspects that Safdie (who also directed) might say that the work is intended for all viewers – but if you’re not an architect, a lot of the contextual backdrop for the flatly articulated soul searching and numbing theoretical debate will seem impenetrable. To paraphrase the old saying, “You don’t have to be an architect to work here . . . but it helps!” 

Safdie’s drama focuses on the sort of repartee of high ideas and high ideals that could have been compelling if the piece contained excitement, or some emotional connection.  Instead, the work is as dry and as dusty a hardhat left out in a worksite.

The play takes place at the architecture firm founded by genius architect Anton (Daniel J. Travanti), who has been contracted by the Polish government to create what he believes will be his greatest masterpiece – a memorial for victims of the Holocaust, set right in the center of a former village where many Jews died. Not long after creating an early vision for the project, Anton bumps into his new intern, sultry beauty (and ferocious intellect) Linda (Amanda Saunders), who is just starting her freshman year in a university architecture program.  Linda criticizes Anton’s ideas to his face, instead suggesting that he choose a completely different direction for his work.  Admittedly, it does seem as though Anton is about to create one of those godawful “visitor” sites, complete with amusement park rides through Holocaust-land. Linda’s ideas, however, are no more promising: She envisions a sort of black pit with pieces of human arms sticking out.

Anton, stimulated as much by his attraction for Linda as anything else, listens to her ideas before the two engage in a debate about the nature of art, the foolishness of attempting to create a building that sums up something as unimaginable as the Holocaust, and the nature of love.  There’s some smooching – and considering the gulf of power (not to mention the age difference) between the pair, it’s disturbing, but not in the good way theater can disturb.

Safdie’s play suggests some intriguing themes – the weird relationship between architect and intern, for instance – but the work’s matter-of-fact ambivalence as to the way that Anton uses Linda, who, essentially, uses him right back, is ultimately left to dangle. Would there even be a play if Anton’s intern had been, say, a fat, pimply 19-year-old boy? 

The play’s verbose conversations, peppered with references to Camus and Kant and Star Trek (often within the same exchange) are as flat as a slab.  Safdie’s staging is just as inert: The romantic scenes are tepidly involving. The characters’ justifications for doing what they do simply don’t ring true. 

As the flinty, burned out architect, Travanti has an engaging gravitas, and he also possesses a haunting frailty. Unfortunately, he’s left trying to bring depth to a character that doesn’t possess much. Saunders has the more thankless role, and she’s not able to knit together a sustained personality from the fragments Safdie gives her. (Who could bring veracity to lines such as, “How do you justify the decomposition of the metaphor of the Star of David?”) 

Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 Fourth Street, Santa Monica; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m.; through May 11. (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com/evant/588251