Too Much Sun
Reviewed by Stephen Fife
Indie Chi Productions
Extended through April 28
Too Much Sun, receiving its West Coast premiere at the Odyssey Theatre, is playwright Nicky Silver’s attempt to write a different kind of comedy. Known for his scorching satirical farces like Food Chain, Pterodactyls, Raised in Captivity and The Lyons, Silver has described Too Much Sun as “gentle, loving and forgiving,” with an ending that’s “fun and life-affirming.”
As an admirer of Silver’s earlier and more misanthropic plays, I can only say “Yikes” and “please don’t do that again.” Certainly the current production, directed by Bart DeLorenzo, serves as strong evidence of what a bad idea Silver had in forgoing his edge.
The play opens with central character Audrey Langham (Diane Cary) onstage during a tech rehearsal of Euripedes’ Medea in a Chicago regional theater. Audrey is playing Medea, and it is not going well. Something of a lower-tier theatrical diva, Audrey hates her costume, hates the direction and is feeling lousy on top of it. I’ve heard that this sequence was hilarious off-Broadway with Linda Lavin playing the role, but it doesn’t work here. Ms. Carey is simply too slow and dithering for the speech to gather the necessary momentum for us to believe she’s having a nervous breakdown, much less make this funny.
The rest of the play takes place at the beachfront Cape Cod cottage of Audrey’s daughter Kitty (Autumn Reeser) and her husband Dennis (Bryan Langlitz), where Audrey has shown up unannounced. As we soon discover, Audrey has been a terrible mother, constantly neglecting her daughter in favor of her career, even sending her understudy to Kitty’s wedding. This is in fact the first time that Audrey has even visited her daughter’s summer house. Kitty is bursting with justifiable rage, but she is too afraid of her own anger to express it. A high school teacher, she hates her job and resents her husband, who has taken the summer off from his ad agency job to write a sci-fi novel that he hasn’t even begun. The stage has been set for a classic mother-daughter showdown — but no, this is the kinder, gentler Nicky Silver, who is determined to be “life-affirming.” Once again – bad idea.
The fact of the matter is, Silver here displays little ability to draw characters with any depth. Each has one or two basic traits, and these often seem completely arbitrary — chosen for their entertainment value rather than any insight they might provide. So when Gil (Joe Gillette) shows up — he’s the assistant to Audrey’s furious agent — we find out that what he really would like to be is a rabbi, even though he’s not Jewish. Funny, yes – like Seinfeld’s dentist, who wants to convert to Judaism for the jokes — but what does it really tell us? While it becomes a running gag in the play, it’s never really elaborated upon, nor does the joke get any funnier.
Perhaps the most interesting character is Lucas, the son of Kitty’s next-door neighbor. Lucas is 17-years-old, gay, and serving as the community’s local pot dealer until he goes off to UCLA in the fall. As played by Bailey Edwards, Lucas is not really funny at all. He’s sensitive and aware and somewhat melancholy. He could just as easily be a poet as a pot dealer, with his insights into human frailty and his meditations on death. Lucas has a terrible relationship with his father, Winston (Clint Jordan), but there’s no simmering hostile tension between them. They are simply from different planets; in fact, Lucas appears to be from a different play. Or maybe Lucas is the kind of character that Silver wanted to create in this more “forgiving’ universe, and everyone else is wrongly configured. In either case, Lucas doesn’t fit into this world, nor does his ultimate fate make any sense here.
DeLorenzo doesn’t do Silver any favors by his casting. As Winston, Jordan doesn’t know how to make his character’s eccentricities funny, nor does he project the needed gravitas when we’re supposed to take him seriously. Reeser’s Kitty never suggests how deeply she’s been hurt by her mother’s neglect. Even when she finally unleashes her anger, she remains mousy, playing everything on the same TV sitcom level. Carey’s narcissism is believable but not very interesting. She seems to lack that next gear of outrageousness which Silver’s dialogue often requires to get under our skin. Gillette is fine as Gil and Langlitz does a good job with Kitty’s husband Dennis, especially in his only important scene. But again, the tone of that scene is too serious for this flimsy play.
In general, the piece alternates between serious and comedic sequences with little stylistic coherence, while the “transformative” ending feels phony, unearned. But it would be wrong to leave out that the opening night audience seemed entertained, and most audiences will probably find a great deal to be amused by in this minor effort by a strong, often elegant writer.
The Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Sawtelle; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; extended through Apr. 28. (310) 477-2055 x2 or www.OdysseyTheatre.com. Running time: 125 minutes with one intermission.
