Meet Lorraine, the central figure of Happy Talk, Jesse Eisenberg’s latest play. Lorraine will be very pleased to meet you, because there’s nothing Lorraine loves more than an audience.
The chipper and chatty Lorraine is one of those relentlessly cheerful individuals who is always “on,” as if she were acting the leading role in the story of her life rather than merely living it. Still girlishly pretty at 60, Lorraine is a longtime mainstay of the amateur drama group at her local Jewish Community Center, where she is presently in rehearsals as Bloody Mary in South Pacific.
Although Bloody Mary is a supporting character in that vintage musical, Happy Talk unfolds entirely in the present day within the living room slash kitchen of Lorraine’s home in suburban New Jersey where she obviously is the dazzling star of all she surveys.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★ review here.]
It’s a shame that her domestic audience is so limited. Bill, Lorraine’s husband, is a depressed retiree who is suffering from incipient multiple sclerosis and mostly sits silently in his recliner, reading about the Civil War and swilling vodka. Jenny, their adult daughter, has moved away. Lorraine’s bedridden old mother never leaves her room anymore but can be heard persistently buzzing for assistance from Ljuba, her live-in home aide.
An illegal Serbian immigrant, Ljuba is a sweet, agreeable woman of perhaps 40 who’s become Lorraine’s biggest fan during the six months she’s been in the house. Not incidentally, Ljuba happens to be so anxious to obtain a green card that she’s saved up $15,000 to buy herself a temporary American spouse.
Thrilled to assume the role of Miss Fix-It, Lorraine arranges for Ljuba a potential match with Ronny, one of her drama group chums, who subsequently comes for a visit. Although a nice enough fellow, Ronny is so obviously a très gay show queen that you will immediately wonder how Lorraine thinks that he would ever pass muster with skeptical immigration officials as Ljuba’s legitimate husband.
You begin to suspect Lorraine’s true motives. You may recall Lorraine’s earlier playful fantasy about the pleasant life that she and Ljuba might share when her husband and mother have passed on. Lorraine and Ljuba appear to have bonded into being such a mutual admiration society that perhaps she does not really want the somewhat naïve Ljuba to become independent of her.
And so Happy Talk grows not so happy anymore, especially after the estranged Jenny makes an unexpected midnight appearance to tell her mother a nasty thing or three.
Of course, anybody who has witnessed Eisenberg’s previous three plays is likely to expect ugly behavior here. All of those realistic stories begin fairly nicely and then end badly for certain characters. Speaking of characters, the extremely self-centered, perhaps even delusional Lorraine is quite a juicy role, so it’s easy to see why Susan Sarandon signed on to portray her in The New Group’s world premiere of Happy Talk, which opened Thursday at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
Although the play suffers from a hasty, not entirely credible conclusion, the characters are vividly composed, and director Scott Elliott provides a smoothly paced production. It all unfolds in less than two hours on Derek McLane’s purposefully bland setting for a living room that’s apparently not been redone since the middle 1980s, which is when Lorraine would have been in the prime of life, so why would she ever consider changing it?
Perhaps Sarandon was experiencing an off night at a recent preview, but her portrait of a possibly crazy lady was not entirely convincing to me. Watching Sarandon swan through the fatuous Lorraine’s doings, I could not help but think about how other actors might interpret the character—which is a sure sign that this performance did not fascinate me as it should. Possibly Sarandon will grow more organically into Lorraine as the run of the show continues.
In the meantime, Marin Ireland seems entirely Slavic in accents and bubbling emotions as Ljuba while Nico Santos (of Crazy Rich Asians fame) is sweet and funny as Ronny, one of those guys who’s always got a song coming on. The ailing Bill has little to say, but Daniel Oreskes, ever an eloquent actor, brings this brooding man to painful life. Tedra Millan gives Jenny, the dismissive daughter, a social justice warrior sort of superior attitude. Designer Clint Ramos nicely dresses everyone according to their character.
Happy Talk opened May 16, 2019, at Signature Center and runs through June 16. Tickets and information: thenewgroup.org
