[ssba]

The Great Divide

Reviewed by Paul Birchall

Lillian Theatre

Through August 29

On a most straightforward level, playwright Lyle Kessler’s new dramedy is about the fractious relationship between two sons and their irascible, judgmental, curmudgeonly dad. However, Kessler’s work is concerned not merely with a family’s brawls, confrontations, and rage — as it appears on the surface.  The play’s also about dysfunction in its strictest meaning:  Disconnection between people and events, set in a context whose incidents sometimes border on the nonsensical.

Upon learning that his intimidating, terrifying dad (Richard Chaves) has died, troubled adult son Colman (Adam Haas Hunter) returns from years of self-mandated exile to his family home.  He arrives to find dad laid out on the sofa, being mourned by Colman’s sweet, damaged younger brother Dale (Brandon Bales). It looks like pa’s death will provide the opportunity for Colman to make peace with his past and to reconcile with his long estranged brother. 

But, in a freakish twist, it turns out that dad is just faking being dead:  After a genuinely surprising, Lazarus-like rejuvenation, dad is soon back on his feet, roaring with hate and sneering at his sons, turning them back into the miserable whelps he’s dominated his whole life.  Into the ensuing house of family horrors arrives Colman’s sweetheart Lane (Kate Huffman), and Lane’s thug-like brother Noah (Mark McClain Wilson), who have their own family agendas. 

If one were to really close one eye halfway and search for the play’s meaning, it is possible to discuss the work’s unbelievable narrative elements – and there are many – as being suggestive of, perhaps, the author’s meditation on absurd irony and the nature of reality’s pure randomness. However, to someone who only sees the show once, the play merely seems choppy and sloppy.  Aside from ridiculously padded dialogue of the sort in which a character says “blah,” another character says “whaddya mean blah?” and the first character replies, “whaddya mean whaddya mean blah?,” the work is riddled with implausibilities that turn whimsy to lead. The dad is supposed to have been dead for two days but no one realized he was just lying there faking it?  That’s not artistically challenging, it’s just logically slack.  Dad’s just lucky that the sons didn’t donate the body to the med school for dissection, or for burning.  

Similarly, Noah, who has one arm, comes up with a different story every five minutes to explain how he lost the limb.  It’s a gimmick that’s meant to be cute and absurd, one supposes, but it just becomes irritating and clumsy as there seems no need for it as far as the plot is concerned.  Colman’s love interest Lane sees visions and hears the voices of dead characters singing.  But so what?  It’s a quirk that’s just imposed onto the plot, like a cook throwing spaghetti on the wall to see if any of the strands will stick.  The quirks are labored – the very opposite of ironic whimsy, making the piece come across as inadequately thought out.  

One suspects that many of the play’s strained plot developments are intended as comedic, but director Brian Fofi, a usually creditable hand, chooses to focus more on psychology and subtext than on the more straightforward craft of finding the humor. The piece suffers from a mood that’s elegiac and glum, with obvious “laugh lines” entirely trundled over in a way that leaves us scratching our heads.  The piece isn’t quite brooding enough to be dark, and is too contrived to hold together dramatically.  Yet, the comedic elements are so underplayed, it’s not successful as a comedy, either.

Performances are intriguing, particularly the rather sweet and vulnerable turns by the actors playing the two brothers.  Bales is nicely sensitive and quirky as the aspiring writer-brother, while Hunter’s tougher, emotionally seething sibling suggests a backstory that we rather wish the writer had explored.  The problem is that the far less interesting character of the dad, played with tightly wound vigor by Chaves, tends to blow all the other, potentially compelling figures off the stage.  Ironically, we sense that the play might have more heft had the dad never “returned to life” at all. Without his blustery scene chewing, perhaps the other relationships and supporting roles might be able to emerge from the eclipse in which they’re hidden.

Lillian Theatre, 1036 N. Lillian Way, Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m.; through August 29. (323) 960-4429, https://plays411.com