Review: Huntington's COCKTAIL HOUR Served Chilled with a Twist

Written by A.R. Gurney; directed by Maria Aitken; scenic design, Allen Moyer; costume design, Candice Donnelly; lighting design, Paul Palazzo; sound design, John Gromada; production stage manager, Emily F. McMullen; stage manager, Jeremiah Mullane

Cast in Order of Appearance:
Bradley, Richard Poe; John, James Waterston; Ann, Maureen Anderman; Nina, Pamela J. Gray

Performances and Tickets:
Now through December 15, Huntington Theatre Company, BU Theatre, 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Mass.; tickets start at $25 and are available by calling the Box Office at 617-266-0800 or online at www.huntingtontheatre.org

Tony and Olivier Award-winning director Maria Aitken (Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, Betrayal, Private Lives) once again brings her deft touch to Boston's Huntington Theatre Company with a taut and tangy production of THE COCKTAIL HOUR, A.R. Gurney's quasi-autobiographical exposé of the bitter truths lurking beneath one well-bred WASP family's carefully polished veneer. By creating a smooth mix of bygone civility and contemporary angst, Aitken and her nimble cast have managed to knock the dust off of this dated and somewhat quaint comedy of manners to unearth the timeless and even timely themes of family dysfunction and a dying conservative socio-economic breed.

Set in Buffalo, NY circa 1970s, THE COCKTAIL HOUR pits malcontent playwright John (James Waterston) against his rigid upper middle class parents Bradley (Richard Poe) and Ann (Maureen Anderman) when he visits from New York City seeking their permission to produce his latest play. Based on his family's skewed dynamics and centering on the nightly pre-dinner drinking ritual that serves as the balm for their stifled lives, John's "The Cocktail Hour" becomes the focal point of Gurney's THE COCKTAIL HOUR, with life suddenly imitating the art that is imitating life.

With terrific naturalness and ease, the expert cast navigates buoyantly through Gurney's distilled waters, melting away their characters' carefully crafted objections and facades with each new double shot of Scotch or extra "splash" of Vodka. Bradley's loosened lips reveal a devastating loss from his own childhood while Ann's weakened inhibitions allow her to share with John a deep dark secret she had only heretofore expressed in the pages of a romance novel she has long since destroyed.

Older sister Nina (Pamela J. Gray) also exposes the chinks in her multi-layered emotional armor, although she doesn't need quite as much liquid courage to do so. She's the anxious and dutiful daughter who stayed in Buffalo while younger brothers John and Jigger (always a presence though he never appears) left the family's suffocating civility behind. As a result Nina rants neurotically, complaining of her "minor role" and stomach pains that no doubt spring from her repressed desires to become something more than a wife, mother, and super-achieving member of countless charitable boards. Half-seriously, half-comically, she dreams of escape via a Cleveland "dog school" that would enable her to translate her volunteer work with the SPCA into an actual and more meaningful career.

Though John May have physically removed himself from his family's well-ordered and controlled life by trading in a lucrative publishing career for the more precarious one of a playwright, he has yet to shed the emotional ties that chafe and bind. Hounded by the thought that there is some childhood mystery that suddenly turned his father against him and cut him off from the family's love, he has concocted a mystery of his own as the central twist in his new play. Unsatisfied with the way in which that twist fits, however, John is compelled to confront his parents for a resolution. Given that the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree, however, he does so indirectly - by presenting them with "The Cocktail Hour" during one of their nightly cocktail hours. Knowing at some level that they will strenuously object to having their private lives paraded publicly on stage, John uses the ensuing debate as an opportunity to uncover hidden truths.

As John, Waterston has a hangdog quality that shades his inner pain with a lovable if sometimes stinging wit. He alternately winces and rails at his father's disapproval but shows a softer side when sharing memories with his mother. With his sister, he relaxes into conspiratorial humor and accepts from her the criticisms that he rebuffs when they come from his father. Waterston manages to make a potentially whiny character sympathetic. He turns his anguished search for love and acceptance into a sincere rather than self-absorbed post-adolescent identity crisis.

Richard Poe as the gruff patriarch Bradley has a delightful way with the unintended zinger. Blissfully unaware that his definition of civility is just another term for narrow-minded pomposity, he tosses off criticisms as if they were unadulterated fact. His method of dealing with uncomfortable issues is to dismiss them as irrelevant or inevitable. Even the fact that he may be dying of leukemia is waved away off-handedly as "a little blood thing." His desire ultimately to be portrayed positively in John's play then comes as a touching turnaround that Poe captures quite delicately. For all the bluster and bullying, he reveals that Bradley also has considerable depth.

As Ann, Maureen Anderman is a lovely little tippler who redirects unsavory conversations to the more benign every chance she gets. Seeming to have traveled forward in time from a genteel era that is no more, she prefers to reminisce about the "real theater" of the Lunts and Katharine Hepburn than discuss the "noisy" plays written by her son. If her world view is a little cockeyed, her naïveté makes her all the more endearing. Without an ounce of insincerity or guile, Anderman is at once daffy and very shrewd.

Pamela J. Gray also makes her self-sacrificing Nina a combination of resentful martyr and adoring Daddy's little girl. Stopping short of annoying, she balances her own personal regrets with a genuine appreciation for her family that enables her to see both sides of the conflict and lovingly take John to task. Gray embodies the well-bred girl with the perfect posture, refined and reserved like her parents but longing for the freedom of expression her two brothers are on the path to achieve.

Scenic designer Allen Moyer has created a physical world for THE COCKTAIL HOUR that is elegant, inviting and just a little austere. A massive high-ceiling parlor wallpapered and trimmed in thick white moulding has every picture, knick knack and wing chair in place. Its Depression Era china cabinet, book shelf, piano and writing desk are all beautifully inlaid in walnut veneer. A servant's kitchen is suggested off-stage right, and a long banistered staircase upstage of a cavernous columned arch leads ostensibly to the home's many bedrooms. One surmises that not much has changed over the years in this well-to-do household. Just like its remaining two occupants, even its lamps and lighting fixtures are old school.

Costumes by Candice Donnelly show that conservative tastes run in the family with mother and daughter both dressed in long skirts and long-sleeved tops and father and son wearing plaid shirts, corduroy pants and jackets oF Brownish tweeds. While mother and father may be more crisply starched and buttoned down, it's clear by the fabric choices and Earth tone pallettes that John and Nina are definitely their parents' offspring.

With THE COCKTAIL HOUR Maria Aitken has once again demonstrated her tremendous affinity for smart drawing room comedies and lemon-zest wit. She has helped her cast etch exquisite performances that elevate Gurney's now outdated material to something that feels more contemporary than period. With a cool eye and a fresh twist, Huntington Theatre Company is serving a smooth drink well worth savoring.

PHOTOS BY T. Charles Erickson: Richard Poe as Bradley; Maureen Anderman as Ann; Pamela J. Gray as Nina, Richard Poe and James Waterston as John; James Waterston and Richard Poe; James Waterston; James Waterston and Maureen Anderman; the cast of THE COCKTAIL HOUR

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