Review Roundup: UGLY LIES THE BONE, Starring Mamie Gummer, Opens Off-Broadway

Roundabout Theatre Company presents the Roundabout Underground world-premiere production of Ugly Lies the Bone by Lindsey Ferrentino, directed by Patricia McGregor, as part of the 50th Anniversary Season. The world premiere of Ugly Lies the Bone opens off-Broadway tonight, October 13, 2015 at the Black Box Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street).

The cast features Karron Graves (Kacie), Mamie Gummer (Jess), Caitlin O'Connell (Voice / Their Mom), Chris Stack (Stevie) and Haynes Thigpen (Kelvin).

Newly discharged soldier Jess (Gummer) has finally returned to her Florida hometown. She brings with her not only vivid memories of her three tours in Afghanistan, but painful burns that have left her physically and emotionally scarred. Jess soon realizes that things at home have changed even more than she has. Through the use of virtual reality video game therapy, she builds a breathtaking new world where she can escape her pain. As Jess advances farther in the game, she begins to restore her relationships, her life and, slowly, herself.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: The play itself, about a severely wounded war veteran attempting to put together a new life, confirms that Lindsey Ferrentino is a writer of dauntless conviction. This bracing drama...starring a superb Mamie Gummer as that damaged vet, confronts an achingly topical issue with hardheaded honesty and admirable compassion...Despite the forthright depictions of Jess's suffering and frustration, "Ugly Lies the Bone," directed by Patricia McGregor with careful attention to subtle changes in texture, retains a certain buoyancy. Ms. Gummer deftly draws out all the wryness in Jess's personality, even as she makes clear that it's often gallows humor born of her traumatic experience.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: Played with a searing intensity by Mamie Gummer, the character well represents the thousands of veterans who have come home bearing the scars of war...Ferrentino's writing is deeply felt and often touching. But the play, running a brief 75 minutes, feels underdeveloped and strangely thin. The supporting characters need to be more fully fleshed-out, with some of them...registering as little more than stereotypes...This is the rare new play that actually feels too short...But the work does have truly affecting moments, such as...when, dropping all her emotional defenses, [Jess] happily lies in the arms of her loving but diminished mother, who thinks her daughters are still in grammar school. It's in these scenes, wonderfully played by Gummer, that the character's true inner beauty shines through.

David Cote, Time Out NY: Ugly Lies the Bone, Lindsey Ferrentino's 75-minute portrait of a veteran adjusting to peacetime, is a trade-off: worthy but schematic. The nonprofit Off Broadway equivalent of Oscar bait, the piece telegraphs easily digested points through repetitious rehab sessions for returning soldier Jess (Mamie Gummer)...Ugly Lies the Bone is not heavy on plot: The dramatic crux is Jess making peace with her goofy but goodhearted ex-boyfriend, Stevie (Chris Stack)...Scenes between Jess and Stevie have a humor and tenderness that leaven the more portentous areas of the play...Patricia McGregor directs the strong ensemble with honesty and attention to detail. Gummer is a bit too coolly patrician to take as a lower-middle-class Florida native, but she delivers a studious and strenuous performance.

Jesse Green, Vulture: ...the way [Jess] adjusts to her pain, with the help of virtual reality technology, is fresh and fascinating and periodically wondrous. It's also, largely, real...Everything that happens in the social scenes is banal compared to the therapy. The doofus ex, the doting sister, and the sister's slacker boyfriend aren't in the same league as Jess; it's as if Ferrentino deliberately made them and their concerns (lottery tickets, space launches, love) insufferably petty to show what Jess is up against. But Jess comes from their world, and nothing we learn about her suggests disdain for it per se...The disdain can only be an unfortunate side effect - the collateral damage, if you will - of the playwright's inability to integrate Jess into a story that's both logical and worthy of her suffering, and also perhaps of awkward direction (by Patricia McGregor) that only exacerbates the damning contrast...That it keeps recovering anyway is mostly the result of the extraordinary performance of Mamie Gummer as Jess.

Jonathan Mandell, DC Theatre Scene: Ferrentino is more sanguine than Haley about our age of technology, but also suggests its downsides. Jess is not the only one who has become unrecognizable; so has her hometown, which is suffering economic hardship because of the dismantling of NASA's nearby shuttle program...But the playwright has more on her mind than matters of technology, exploring themes that transcend our particular time and place...As fascinating as the virtual reality treatment is, what's at the heart of Ferrentino's play - and what works best - is Jess's interaction with the other characters...The play allows its characters to be off-putting - the two men in particular frequently weigh in somewhere between goofy and obnoxious - while ultimately sympathetic. The uniformly spot-on cast makes them credible and moving.

Jeremy Gerard, Deadline: Ugly Lies The Bone is clearly the work of a young talent with plenty ahead of her. It's timely, compelling and as current as you could want; brava to a playwright who focuses on the combat experiences of a woman. It's also self-consciously bleak and overwrought, which is not to suggest that the subject is ripe for glossing. Only that Jess' return from the war doesn't need the underlining it sometimes gets in Patricia McGregor's alternately brisk and heavy-handed production.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus