[ssba]
Almost Perfect
Reviewed by Paul Birchall
Santa Monica Playhouse
Through June 28.
Director Chris DeCarlo’s staging of the 29th anniversary production of playwright Jerry Mayer’s play about marriage and temptation inevitably shows its age — and not just because the work’s sitcom structure and conveniently pat situations lack the ambiguity of turn of Millennial modern romcoms.
Mayer’s strength has always been his dialogue, boasting quick-witted and slickly adroit one-liners and gags that occasionally hint at the sourness lurking beneath the jokes. However, his characterizations and plot are usually less assured.
Mayer’s play charts the midlife crisis of a youngish building contractor. Now, themes such as midlife crises are indeed perennial. In the late ’80s, a guy having a midlife crisis would get a new speedy red car. In the 2010s, he’d buy a new Apple watch or a pair of Google glasses. And in the near future, perhaps he’ll get a new jet pack and inter-dimensional transporter. In Mayer’s play, though, the crisis takes the shape of a man falling in love with a gal who’s not his wife.
Working at a soul-deadening job at his dad’s construction firm, Buddy (Michael Marinaccio) discovers that his life is in a rut -– and with good reason: His marriage to his frustrated wife Jenny (Ryan Driscoll) has devolved into her shrilly sniping at him about his bad habits, his dad (Don Gilvezan) is a rigid micromanager and noodge, and he himself feels as though he’s drifting farther and farther away from his dreams of writing a great screenplay (and there is nothing more dated in this play than the idea that someone might dream of writing a hit spec script).
When sultry potential client Boots (Lucy Rayner) shows up at Buddy’s work, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to her beauty — and to the fact that she laughs at his hammy jokes when no one else will. Before long, Buddy and Boots are having an affair, and Buddy is soon lying to both his wife and his lover about the future together.
It is perhaps best to avoid discussing the sympathetic, yet casually sexist mid-‘80s-style presentation of the female characters as being mostly passive attachments to the male characters. Yes, these are borderline problematical characters, but they suggest more the time and the culture the play was written in as much as anything else. Some of the situations Mayer depicts otherwise reminds one of the dark romantic farces of 1980s-era Alan Ayckbourn, but the problem is that Mayer’s glib tongue for dialogue comes at the cost of a rather tin ear for emotional depth. The situations are frequently ripped right out of an old sitcom, and the easy resolutions have the unsatisfying straightforward nature of TV culture.
Director DeCarlo’s staging is tight and surprisingly warm-hearted, particularly during scenes involving the cast’s secondary figures, including the nicely bickering relationship between Don Gilvazan’s Alan Alda-like turn as Buddy’s dad, and Barbara Keegan, all Yente charm as his mom. As for the leads, though, Marinaccio, Driscoll, and Rayner are afflicted by a peculiar lack of romantic chemistry, which makes Buddy ultimately come across as merely cloddish, and the women as unpleasantly shrill.
Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 Fourth Street, Santa Monica; Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 3:30 p.m.; through June 28. (310) 394-9779 Ext. 1, https://santamonicaplayhouse.com.
