The men and women we meet in David Rabe’s new play, Good For Otto, are a motley group of haunted souls—a couple of them dead, the rest still breathing but consigned to various purgatories. There’s Jane, whose grown son Jimmy, also present, killed himself with a shotgun while she slept in the next room. Barnard, a septuagenarian, has been holed up in bed for weeks, while Frannie, a twelve-year-old foster child, cuts herself to keep constant inner “storms” at bay.
These lives and others intersect in a bucolic town near the Berkshire Mountains, at a mental health center where Dr. Michaels and Evangeline Ryder—played, in a production by The New Group, by longtime spouses and collaborators Ed Harris and Amy Madigan—work as therapists. In writing the play, now having its New York premiere at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Rabe was inspired by the late Richard O’Connor’s book Undoing Depression, hailed by followers for offering practical and accessible guidance for those bitten by the black dog.
Clinic director Dr. Michael, whom Harris effortlessly imbues with both a brusque wit and palpable compassion, is a pretty straight shooter himself. He laments that Frannie was “just dropped into the world, because two idiots had sex.” Harris’s character, notably, was also something of an abandoned child, having lost his mother to suicide when he was nine. (O’Connor was 15 when his own mom took her life.) “Mom,” as she is called, is a frequent and vexing presence in Otto; embodied as a gorgeous young redhead by a sly Charlotte Hope, she stalks and taunts her now sixtysomething son in between sessions and occasionally during them.
Presumably, Mom is a figment of Dr. Michaels’s vague memories, lingering grievances, and stinging regrets. Jimmy, presented by Michael Rabe (the playwright’s son) as an ironic specimen of physical vitality, also seems to exist in Jane’s recollections—at least until he begins describing, in segment that feels piercingly topical, how the presence of a weapon enticed him: “The shotgun was there, it was waiting…It was like it spoke.” (Rabe’s social consciousness also informs a couple of tense exchanges between Dr. Michaels and a maddeningly unempathetic insurance company rep.)
As helmed by New Group artistic director Scott Elliott, Otto lurches from such surreal moments to naturalistic conversations between the therapists and their patients, or among the clinic staff. When not in focus, the actors sit in chairs placed on both sides of the virtually bare stage and in back, observing as their characters might. Music is repeatedly used to unify or console; the show opens with Dr. Michaels blowing on a pitch pipe and leading a group hum, and he later imagines trying to teach Frannie a favorite song. A piano is wheeled out at one point, and downtown fixture Kenny Hellman, formerly of Kiki and Herb, plays it while remaining in character as Jerome, a disheveled patient preoccupied with boxing up his belongings.
The mix of reflection and whimsy isn’t always smooth. Over the production’s nearly three hours, with intermission, there are scenes that drag (as therapy sessions will at times) and journeys left hanging; Jimmy and Jane pretty much disappear soon after their memorable introduction. But the cast, guided by Elliott with delicacy and conviction, make the struggles and the progress compelling. Aside from Harris and Madigan, who’s razor-sharp while radiating warmth, standouts include F. Murray Abraham, by turns hilarious and moving as Barnard, an elderly patient led from a rut to a revelation; and Rileigh McDonald’s fragile, furious Frannie, heartbreaking in her confusion and knowing. (Rhea Perlman is affecting as the foster parent trying to rescue her from a failing system.)
Maulik Pancholy delivers an equally vital, and troubling, performance as Alex, a lonely young man coming to terms with his sexuality, while as the mentally disabled Timothy, Mark Linn Baker lets you fully appreciate Evangeline’s description of his character as possessing a ”sweetness like that of a newborn.”
Otto, the title character, never appears; he’s actually Timothy’s hamster—who has his own problems, though not the kind that would be addressed in this setting. But like most of the human beings we meet in the play, the little rodent is a survivor, and that, Rabe reminds us, is no small thing.
Good For Otto opened March 8 and at the Pershing Square Signature Center and is running through April 15. Information and tickets: thenewgroup.org.
