Well before a certain West End and Broadway phenomenon made him a hero among Potterheads, Jack Thorne had established himself as an astute chronicler of personal and social demons. With plays, films and British TV miniseries such as National Treasure and Glue, the Tony Award winner—for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two—has drawn vivid characters whose foibles are traced with incisive wit and pronounced compassion. (Never mind the more recent King Kong; my guess is that Thorne’s instincts were as much a victim of that fiasco as the beast himself.)
Which is why it’s disappointing to report that Thorne’s new play, Sunday, is something of a mess—a fascinating mess, with great bursts of eloquence and moments that will move you deeply, but ultimately less than the sum of these parts.
Both the problem and the allure are in part structural. Thorne and director/choreographer Lee Sunday Evans focus first on one set of characters, a group of twentysomethings who have formed a weekly book club. They meet at an apartment shared by two members, Marie and Jill; as assembled by set designer Brett J. Banakis, it appears, as homes occupied in that stage of life tend to, both sparsely furnished and cluttered, its central feature a towering pile of books. “We call it sloppy chic,” Jill explains.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★ review here.]
Before the proceedings get underway, we’re briefly introduced to a neighbor, Bill, a man in his late 30s, who will reappear after most of the others have left, in a long, emotionally charged scene that threatens to go in a number of unsettling directions but ultimately leaves us, and him, stumped. Another club member, Alice, doubles throughout as a sort of narrator, providing backstories and wry commentary on her peers, who intermittently break into dance moves—by turns frenetic, sensual and goofy, accompanied by music and intended, possibly, to facilitate transitions, reflect moods and motives and let the characters (and actors?) blow off steam.
In tackling that delicate period between post-adolescence and full-fledged adulthood, Thorne can lapse into youthful or trendy archetypes. Alice is the passionate skeptic and seemingly willing outsider, whose acerbic wit barely masks her need for a sense of attachment. When her old friend Keith starts venting about the “toxic masculinity” of one of the characters in their chosen book, Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Alice laments the devolution of that concept into cliché. Thorne provides her with a withering indictment of millennial/Generation Z irony and angst; “We cling to fiction,” she declares, because “it’s the only original thing in our lives.” Actress Ruby Frankel makes these lines and others sting without sparing us glimpses of Alice’s vulnerability.
Milo, a mutual pal of Alice and Keith, is more vexing; a scion of generations of wealth and white privilege, he’s as unaware of his own good fortune as he is cruelly insensitive to and manipulative of others. Frankly, I’m beginning to view such bro-bashing caricatures as I suspect Alice might; it’s much easier to paint such monsters than it is to dig into the complex issues that inform them. Still, Zane Pais plays Milo to the aggressive hilt, making him as ugly in spirit as he is handsome (in a frat-boy fashion, of course) in the flesh. Christian Strange and Juliana Canfield have tougher tasks as, respectively, Keith and Jill, whom Milo is dating; both characters seem defined largely by their strange deference to Milo, made even more disturbing by the fact that both are black.
Marie is the central figure, and seems inspired at least somewhat by Thorne’s personal history: As a college student, the playwright suffered from a debilitating skin condition that, according to a recent New York Times interview, left him on his back for six months; Alice tells us that during Marie’s childhood, she spent one summer confined to her home by allergies, and describes her as socially awkward, as Thorne has described himself.
But we get no sense that Marie’s opportunities for reflection, a word that’s used numerous times in Sunday, have left her with anything other than a capacity for acting against her self-interest. In Sadie Scott’s performance, a model of repressed desperation, she leaves us alternately sad and frustrated, whether interacting with the other characters—including Bill, made quietly compelling by a gentle Maurice Jones—or in those even darker moments when Thorne leaves her alone with her thoughts, and her smart phone.
The play ends, also frustratingly, with what amounts to a giant spoiler, at least for those of us who still care, or are curious, about what comes next for these young men and women. If reading is, as we are told as children, one of the best ways to inspire the imagination, it seems to have done little for Sunday‘s characters—who, in turn, do little for us.
Sunday opened September 23, 2019, at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through October 13. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org
