Review - Kin & Arcadia

A Columbia literary scholar with a passion for the punctuation used in Keats' poetry starts dating a personal trainer who has moved to New York from Ireland. Sounds like the beginning of a romantic comedy about a seemingly mismatched pair trying to get their conflicting worlds to mesh.

But the clever switch regarding Bathsheba Doran's endearing play Kin, premiering at Playwrights Horizons, is that were rarely see the 30-something lovers together. Instead, through a series of quick, loosely connected scenes, we experience the evolution of their relationship through their changing interaction with friends and family.

The play opens with Anna (an emotionally cool Kristen Bush) being rather matter-of-factly dumped by her older colleague/lover (Matthew Rauch). It's a dryly comic scene, the kind Doran utilizes sharply between more sobering moments, like Anna's relationship with her widowed father (Cotter Smith) who must deal with the impending death of his close friend (Kit Flanagan). Laura Heisler is especially funny as her best friend, Helena, a neurotically needy struggling actress who we first meet trying to figure out a legal and inexpensive way to bury her dead dog.

Anna's other half is the nurturing Sean, played with casual warmth by Patch Darragh, whose relationship with his reclusive, alcoholic mother back home (Suzanne Bertish) might explain his past relationship with a similarly troubled ex (Molly Ward).

Director Sam Gold's intimate and very well acted production is staged in and around set designer Paul Steinberg's large, white rectangular frame set at different angles for each scene, emphasizing the theme that what we're watching is a collection of portraits from which we draw the complete story.

Photo of Patch Darragh and Kristen Bush by Joan Marcus.

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If there is such a thing as a populist play by Tom Stoppard, Arcadia would probably fit the bill. Not that it's any less verbally dense than The Invention of Love or lacking thematically as compared with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but at its core, his 1993 comedy/drama deals with a simple human need that exists in all of us, whether the matter at hand be a complex mathematical theory or a juicy bit of celebrity gossip; the need to know.

It's also a deceptively romantic piece, with scenes taking place in the same drawing room of an English country home in both the early 19th Century and modern times, with contemporary characters seeking a connection with the history of the space they inhabit.

Beginning in 1809, we're in the Coverley residence, where young Thomasina (Bel Powley, not especially convincing at playing 13) is coming up with some astoundingly advanced observations regarding chaos theory and thermodynamics, much to the lack of interest of her handsome tutor, Septimus (charismatically self-centered Tom Riley). A literary critic, Septimus has not only unintentionally captured the carnal curiosity of his adolescent student, but has also charmed her mother, Lady Croom (Margaret Colin), whose current crisis involves her landscaper's (the always-welcome Byron Jennings) desire to drastically change the style of her garden. Entering the estate is Ezra Chater (David Turner), a poet of questionable talent who is unaware that it was Septimus who gave an earlier work of his a negative review, but who suspects that the tutor has been carrying on with his wife and wishes to challenge him to a duel. Meanwhile, Septimus' friend, Lord Byron, is wandering about the residence somewhere.

But soon enough we're in the present, where novelist Hannah Jarvis (Lia Williams) is researching one of the peculiar historical aspects of the Coverley garden. She's attracted the attention of mathematician Valentine Coverley (Raul Esparza, in his familiar, but effective, underplaying mode), a current resident of the estate. His sister Chloe (Grace Gummer), has similarly noticed another visitor, historIan Bernard Nightingale (Billy Crudup, who played Septimus in the original Broadway production), who is researching an unknown period of Byron's life and is convinced that is was he who killed Chater in a duel. Williams' driven Hannah and Crudup's smarmy Bernard, though they've never met, have a bit of a common history that fuels their verbal confrontations.

As the present-day players make discoveries in their research, scenes from the past judge their accuracy. Gradually, the two time periods visually blend into a blurry definition of truth.

While director David Leveaux has been known to make some interesting interpretive choices with classics like The Glass Menagerie and Fiddler on the Roof, this is a very straightforward production where a very fine cast glides on the wit of Stoppard's dialogue, the richness of his themes and the theatricality of his structure. The design elements, including Hildegard Bechtler's imposing set, Gregory Gale's elegant costumes and Donald Holder's evocative lights grandly add to the proceedings, making this a sumptuous mounting to savor.

Photo of Raul Esparza, Tom Riley and Lia Williams by Carol Rosegg.

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"Let me tell you something. I find my husband so Goddamned irritating that I'm planning to leave him."

Things aren't going well for the title couple of The New Group's terrific revival of Wallace Shawn's scenes from an abstract marriage, Marie and Bruce. You can tell as soon as you enter the Acorn theatre. There's Bruce (Frank Whaley) contentedly snoozing away in bed while his wife Marie (Marisa Tomei) sits impatiently next to him, smoking a cigarette. At first it seems Marie might be angry at us for making her wait so long, but when she abruptly begins to speak, the reason for her intense agitation is bluntly revealed.

"You're driving me insane! I can't stand living with you for one more minute!" she informs her waking spouse as they go through the paces of what appears to be a morning ritual of verbal abuse. Addressing both the audience and Bruce (who is not aware of our presence), she bullies and sarcastically mocks him for buying a noisy typewriter, making a lunch date with a friend who has a special interest in the history of urine and feces and for not even having the courtesy of fixing her a simple breakfast.

And yet it's not as ugly as you might expect. Shawn tells us nothing of his central couple; not their history, their occupations or their viewpoints, so without any reason for emotional attachment we can guiltlessly feel free to be entertained by Marie's over-the-top complaints and Bruce's complacent non-reactions to them. The play isn't funny, but it's humorous in an oddball sort of way. Particularly since director Scott Elliot offers a light, urban fairy-tale tone to the proceedings. Set designer Derek McClane surrounds the actors on three sides with tall walls of loaded bookshelves and the pieces of the first scene's large bed break down to provide a dining room setting and a café.

The plot-less day-in-the-life has Bruce, who seemed a bit of a lummox at first, suddenly appearing as interesting and popular at a party they attend that night while Marie feels self-conscious and isolated. A merry-go-round of meaningless conversation is wonderfully depicted by having snippets of talk randomly heard as the guests are seated at a revolving table.

By the time the couple has settled at a café for dessert, it has become apparent that Whaley's Bruce is more emotionally aggressive than he appears and while Tomei's Marie has a softer, needy side. If the characters they play are intentionally underwritten, the two leads provide traces of empathy that seep out as the evening progresses. But perhaps the most common reaction to the play might be gratitude for not being in that sort of relationship, and for that reason Marie and Bruce could be considered the feel-good show of the season.

Photos of Marisa Tomei and Frank Whaley by Monique Carboni.

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