Secrets: Keep It To Yourself

There are some critics who relish tearing apart a bad play. They enjoy feeling superior when finding a crafty turn of phrase to put down a bad script, giggle when pointing out an actors' flaws, and relish recounting a directors' absurd missteps. I am not one of these reviewers. I rarely enjoy writing a pan review, but even so, I'll enjoy writing this a helluva lot more than I enjoyed sitting through Gerald Zippers' Secrets.

 

The time is 1985. Len (Darren Lougie), a stock broker, and his upscale art dealer wife, Lally (Elena Zazanis), bicker as they prepare for a dinner party. They are in marriage counseling, and use their therapists' advice to "share responsibilities" as an excuse to guilt one another into tasks as menial as answering the door. The other guests arrive. Gregarious lawyer Matt (Tom Sminkey) stumbles in with a gift bottle of gin. With him is his wife Rhonda (Alyce Mayors), who wastes no time in belittling her hard-drinking spouse, with no concern over making her hosts uncomfortable with her abusive comments. Drinks are quickly handed out and even more quickly inhaled.

 

The next to arrive are Hank and Dora. Hank (Mark Hamlet) is a "TV Personality", actually a kiddie show clown with aspirations (or perhaps delusions) of importance. His wife (Lissa Moira) is a philosophy professor, an uneven, pretentious amalgam of New Age Hippie and botoxed socialite. They, too, dive into the booze, and at first seem less volatile than Matt and Rhonda, but eventually descend into the same sort of sniping. A fourth couple is present in spirit, though they declined the dinner invitation: wealthy Frank and Etta, who are also old chums of the assembled revelers. Their absence is the subject of much nervous speculation, ranging from marital problems to Franks' sudden unemployment.

 

The first act meanders around, as these unpleasant people behave shamefully to one another and get progressively drunker. All of the guests act like this "honest" bitchery is the best part of the fabric of their friendship, while being nostalgic about golf trips and beach parties when they were all younger and nicer. In keeping with the 80's setting, there is talk of Big Breaks, Taking Risks, power, money, and success. There is a long and painfully obvious build up about Rhonda and infidelity, tortured insinuations about Matt's drinking and "manhood" issues, and overplayed discussions of Hanks' resentment of being merely an "entertainer for the kiddies". One wonders how on earth these whiney jerks are invited to anyone's dinner party. Len and Lally spend most of the play saying nothing looking uncomfortable, and one would feel sympathy for the hosts had they not been established as self-centered phonies in the opening moments of the play.

 

The second act abandons the threads of the preceding act and suddenly turns into a bizarre party game of sharing each guest's worst secret. This might have proved interesting had we not already decided to loathe everyone involved.

 

Playwright, poet, and novelist Gerald Zipper has written a number of plays, including A Little Madness. I initially assumed Secrets was originally produced in the 80's era of its setting, which would excuse some of the dated predictability, but this production at St. Lukes theatre is a premiere.

 

Director Ted Mornel lets his actors run wild. The screaming, forced readings, and plain old over-acting is so universal that I have to assume it was a directorial choice. Playing drunk scenes is notoriously difficult, but there are moments of such inexcusably amateur stumbling and slurring that one marvels none of these sots black out or throw up before the conclusion of the play.

 

With this lack of dramatic restraint being the norm, it becomes difficult to blame the actors. The entire production plays as sub-standard community theatre, and it is hard for me to believe that six actors in a top dollar off-Broadway production could be so unsubtle without encouragement from on high. Secrets could have played better as a comedy, but lines like "We are headed for some turbulent waters, and some of us don't have a paddle" and exchanges such as "You said humiliated, but you mean ashamed", "No, I mean embarrassed," are played with such soap opera earnestness that any audience laughs are the stifled, embarrassed sort. Or maybe I mean ashamed…

 

Even the technical aspects are difficult to praise. The sets and costumes, designed by Zen Mansley, are far from cheap and are carefully constructed, but though they ardently evoke the period, they look plain ugly. Josh Iacovellis' lights dim and raise distractingly, trying to accentuate an individual actors' dramatic moment when a static plot would serve better.

 

I think this play was intended to be a six handed Virginia Woolf, but all the characters lack the wit to elevate it beyond childish whining. Late in the play, the repeated lines "Do we need to hear this?" and "This is very painful" took on unintended meanings for the audience. It gives me no joy to write this statement, but like the unbearable protagonists, I must be unbearably honest: Secrets has nothing new to offer thematically, and it is poorly executed on every level.

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