to Stephanie Zimbalist PageMr. Bundy
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What's the matter with kids?
(Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays features works on the troubled American family)
Author: Chris Jones
April 6, 1998
The economy may be boringly buoyant and the globe stultifyingly stable, but baby-boomer playwrights are worried sick about their kids.
If the Actors Theatre of Louisville's annual new plays confab yielded any conclusions on the state of the American dramatic psyche, it's that underneath the general prosperity, familial relation ships are dangerously damaged.
This year's Humana Festival of New American Plays featured full-length works by Donald Margulies, William Mastrosimone, Naomi Wallace, JoAnne Akalaitis, Jane Martin and Stuart Spencer. The first three were writing on commission; it's increasingly tough for unknown scribes to find their way into this prestigious festival, which attracted a bevy of industry folks to Kentucky on the March 27-29 weekend, including development reps from Disney, DreamWorks and most major broadcast and cable webs.
Quality varied drastically. Margulies' "Dinner With Friends" and Martin's "Mr. Bundy" are strong works with excellent prospects; Wallace's "The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek" and Akalaitis' "Ti Jean Blues" are intriguing but flawed; Spencer's "Resident Alien" and Mastrosimone's "Like Totally Weird" were of insufficient quality to merit initial production, let alone future revisitation.
The visitors from the coasts (more non-legit types were in evidence in Kentucky this year) found plenty of fare that could be translated to film or television.
Zimbalist tops `Bundy'
"Mr. Bundy," written by Martin, the pseudonymous Kentucky scribe widely assumed to be someone working at Actors Theatre, is an issue-based drama about two progressive and professional parents who find themselves living next door to a convicted child molester who has already served his time.
Stephanie Zimbalist headed the cast in Jon Jory's excellent premiere production. Adept at plays that provoke intellectual stimulation and argument, Martin provides a shrewd and carefully balanced dramatic treatment of an issue that, fills any parent with fear.
Events revolve around the attempts of right-wing, blue-color outsiders to persuade the self-styled liberals to force the eviction of the seemingly sweet fellow next door. All sides are given a hearing: Mother argues that Mr. Bundy has rights and should not be hurt; dad says that no parent can afford to take chances with the safety of a little girl. Martin manipulates the plot so that dad, an adulterer, requires his own forgiveness.
The play is too measured in places, and the father's alcoholism merits further exploration. We also know too little about the molester who causes all the trouble. But the issue has such weight that this middle-class nightmare drama would likely grip an audience in any media. At the very least, "Mr. Bundy" will be showing up in regional houses across the country.
Hopefully that will not be true of "Resident Alien," in which a spaceship abducts an earthly kid and leaves behind an alien to interact with rural Wisconsinites. With the constant repetition of the stranger-in-a-strange-land gag sequence and accents straight from "Fargo," Spencer's predictable and facile comedy has a few yuks but little else (the author would do better shopping his talents to sitcoms).
Given a large-scale but poorly directed production in Louisville, Mastrosimone's "Like Totally Weird" features two troubled teenagers who invade the home of a Hollywood mogul (a director, actor, writer and producer, the action-flick vet likes to be referred to as "a quad"). The playwright makes the point that the gun-wielding teens are a product of the violent cinematic culture from which their victim profits.
Given recent real events, it's a timely argument, but there are too few of the necessary metatheatrical touches (a la "Scream") and the dramatic events here are not credible given the realistic frame. Held at gunpoint for two hours of stereotypical screaming and shouting, the producer could take out these goofy guys any number of times.
Rural kids are the subject of Wallace's "Trestle," a tale of Depression-era Kentuckians who slowly realize their limited options for a happy life. There's some strong character-based writing in this coming-of-age poetic rural drama, although the lilting narrative does not grab with the necessary force.
Akalaitis' "Ti Jean Blues," directed by the author, has the haunting material of Jack Kerouac as its base, but the 90-minute show is disappointingly sketchy. With a stage littered with baby dolls (no apparent link to beat poetry), an ensemble tries to give theatrical life to Kerouac's narrative jottings.
The original music from Philip Glass is very limited; most staging comes direct from a reader's theater manual; and Kerouac's sexist and racist references are left to stand without directorial comment. The material and the director's talents should have delivered far more.
That leaves "Dinner With Friends," unquestionably the hit of the festival and a commercial piece of writing marrying audience appeal with thematic depth. In this wry drama, two upper-middle-class fortysomething couples find friendship tested when one of the pairs decides to split. Deftly avoiding the cliches of the genre, Margulies emphasizes the impact of the impending divorce on the couple that stays together. Along the way, he address such issues as whether familial responsibility must outweigh personal happiness, the effect of diminishing sexual activity on a marriage, and the frightening crises provoked by the onset of middle-age and dull stability. The play also provides a shrewd satirical treatment of a smug lifestyle marked by gourmet food, foreign travel and "All Things Considered."
The ending is insufficiently clear and the manuscript could use a trim. But this is a thoughtful and funny play (well directed by David Bloom) that sends theater-goers into a spiral of self-exploration.
Margulies' self-indulgent characters, of course, would not be worried so much about their declining virility and dull lives if everything else were not so comfortable -- but then the chroniclers of our comfortable age have to find something to write about.
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