Last night, I finally made it to the Samuel Freidman Theatre to see Richard Greenberg's new play, The Assembled Parties. I'm a big fan of Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, and the cast of this production is to die for. I was very happy to get there last night. I was very sad to see that the theater wasn't terribly full, though. The play got excellent reviews, so I wonder why it's not really selling. Maybe last night was an anomaly. Or maybe things will pick up after the inevitable Tony nominations...
I should say, however, that I didn't feel as rapturously about the play as many of the critics did. I appreciated it, I enjoyed it, I was even moved by a couple of speeches at the end, but I didn't LOVE it. Too bad for me, I guess, but I just felt like there were so many unanswered questions. Should there really be so much left for me to figure out? Should so many things we believed from the first act really fly out the window in the second? I don't know. But these are the types of things that kept me from all-out loving this play.
It will be hard to talk about the play without using spoilers, so read at your own risk, I guess. I'll do my best, though. Set at two Christmas Day dinners, twenty years apart, The Assembled Parties deals with a dysfunctional, privileged, uber-intellectual Jewish American family, who inevitably discover that life doesn't always turn out the way you want it to. In this family, naturally, there are many secrets and lies. Some of the secrets and lies are interesting and make sense; some of the secrets and lies seem like they're just put in the play to gild the lily. The dialogue is witty, though sometimes (perhaps) deliberately off-puttingly pretentious. I may be a bit of a reverse snob, but I consider myself to have a relatively large vocabulary - when a script has a family toss in dozens of words that I have no clue what they mean, I sometimes find it hard to dig back in to the story. Again, that could just be me.
Jessica Hecht and Judith Light are the matriarchs of the family and they are both terrific. These ladies have been written with many dimensions. I frequently have a problem with Jessica Hecht and her vocal mannerisms, but they fit in with this character wonderfully well, so I was totally on board with what she was doing. She has a lovely monologue in the second act about her late mother, where the affectations are dropped and it's just character and emotion. I liked that. And Judith Light was just on fire as the more down-to-earth sister-in-law. The way their interactions in the first act reflected on what was happening in the second act was quite moving. Oh, and Lauren Blumenfeld, as Judith Light's daughter, didn't have much to do but she made the most of her stage time.
The male characters were written a little more sketchily, but they were finely acted nonetheless. I always enjoy Mark Blum, who played Judith Light's husband (yes, I have a bit of a crush). It was hard at first to deal with the fact that his character was less-than-sympathetic, but he's always so detailed and real, he cuts right to the marrow. And then to find out he was sort of a hero all along was quite touching. Although there wasn't much payoff for him that it turns out that way. Jonathan Walker, who I've previously seen and enjoyed in several Charles Busch plays, was also good, but had a harder time filling in the spaces in his character. Jake Silberman, who played a different son in each act, was a little more successful in the second act than the first. Again, I think it was more a fault of the script than the actor. And Jeremy Shamos was excellent as the perpetual outsider/third-wheel, who could actually save them all.
The physical production was outstanding. The apartment, beautifully designed by Santo Loquasto, was another character in the piece. And the way the design was differently utilized in both acts was terrific. Jane Greenwood's costumes were excellently on-point. Her 'vintage' costumes for Jessica Hecht, whose mother was a designer of women's couture, were gorgeous and just the right set-up for some interesting ideas about what you take from your mother. Peter Kaczorowski's lights were subtle and elegant, and Obadiah Eaves' music was never intrusive, but always evocative. Director Lynne Meadow put together a fantastic team and guided her actors very well.
It's hard not to talk about this play without putting in plot points that could ruin your enjoyment if you know them in advance. So I suppose I should stop. I guess the play could be telling us to appreciate life as you're living it, even the unexpectedness, but a lot of the time, there didn't really seem to be any throughline going on. It just seemed like two slices-of-life with no real plotting. Well, no, there was a lot of PLOT, but not a lot of action. If that even makes sense. But wondering what was going to happen to these women generally kept me engaged. I just feel frustrated now, thinking back on the evening, about all of the threads that seem to still dangle. And I'm not sure I should still have so many questions. But perhaps that's the way Richard Greenberg wanted it - no answers, all questions...
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