Admissions, a new play by Significant Other and Bad Jews scribe Josh Harmon, opens in the office of Sherri Rosen-Mason, whose hyphenated name will carry a ring of privilege and aspiration for anyone familiar with Harmon’s milieu. Sherri, the stylish, middle-aged dean of admissions at an elite New Hampshire prep school—ideally cast and wonderfully played by Jessica Hecht—is chiding a colleague for not showing ample diversity in the student photos assembled for a new catalogue.
“This is a failure,” says an exasperated Sherri, who is married to the Hillcrest School’s headmaster, Bill Mason, and prides herself on having expanded the number of non-white pupils at the institution by more than 10percentage points. When Roberta, an older woman who has been affiliated with the school for decades, notes that one student pictured “could be Asian,” Sherri responds that “only the back of his head” is shown. Roberta then points to another pupil, a teacher’s son: “Perry is black! His father’s black!” Sherri retorts, “Don is, is—biracial and Perry … he doesn’t always photograph—he looks whiter than my son in this picture.”
The scene is funny not because it’s absurd; to the contrary, it’s not a great stretch to imagine such an exchange taking place behind closed doors in a present-day school—or business, or film studio—with both genuinely noble intentions and cold pragmatism or jaded self-interest at play. It’s the inevitable tension between these forces that gives Admissions its punch and, ultimately, poignancy.
The catalyst for conflict is Sherri and Bill’s son, Charlie Luther Mason (note the historically conscious middle name), a senior at Hillcrest who has applied early decision to an Ivy League school, along with Perry, his best buddy. We meet Perry’s Caucasian mother, Ginnie, also a longtime family friend, when she saunters into Sherri’s home (Riccardo Hernandez’s spare, spacious set doubles as both working and living space) in the next scene, complaining of Roberta, “She is so white.”
Sherri agrees—though that’s before she and Bill learn of the notifications Charlie and Perry just received from their choice college. Coming home late, Charlie launches into a lengthy, at times hilarious tirade about the plight of the white male, eliciting rather different reactions from his good liberal parents. Bill calls his son a “spoiled little overprivileged brat”; Sherri is more torn, between the progressive instincts that have won her accolades on one hand and, on the other, maternal sympathy and pride—and the niggling sense that her son’s grievances may not be entirely unjustified.
What follows includes an ironic and not especially credible twist that gives Charlie another opportunity to speechify. Yet by making this central character an intelligent but not quite mature and decidedly privileged young man—qualities that Ben Edelman captures to a tee in his frenzied but tender performance as Charlie—Harmon shows us the speciousness in his attempts to reveal his parents as hypocrites.
Ultimately, all of the characters in Admissions are trying their best to do the right thing in a changing world, and under Daniel Aukin’s crisp, robust direction, the actors ably mine their humor and humanity. Andrew Garman heartily relays both the strength of Bill’s convictions and the fragility of his ego, while the marvelous (and ageless) Sally Murphy expertly fields Ginnie’s evolution from a potential caricature of a self-righteous baby-boomer to a woman who has absorbed hard truths with dignity.
Even poor, backwards Roberta, played by a droll Ann McDonough, finds redemption, and vindication of a sort. “It’s perfect,” a weary Sherri says of Roberta’s final photo layout. It’s not, most likely, though neither is the reality it’s intended to reflect, as Admissions reminds us with both wit and compassion.
Admissions opened March 12, 2018 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and runs through April 29. Tickets and information: lct.org
