There are six characters in Joshua Ravetch’s One November Yankee, three sets of siblings, all played by beloved TV stars Harry Hamlin and Stefanie Powers.
There’s Ralph and Maggie; he’s supposed to be “one of the top three modern artists in the world by every major critic outside New York” (her words) and she’s funding his latest installation, Crumpled Plane, set to open in a few hours at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art—but not before she insults his entire oeuvre and compares him to hamburger. (And this is surely not a woman who eats hamburgers—not even at the Polo Bar.) Flash back five years, and we meet self-described “Jewish intellectuals” Harry and Margo, in the middle of mountainous nowheresville New Hampshire after their two-seat single-engine plane crashes. He’s a novelist who gave his book the prophetic (and clunky) title A Very Troubled Journey With A Very Unhappy Ending and she’s a librarian/pilot; they’re flying to Florida to see their father get remarried to a woman who’s a member at Mar-a-Lago. Move forward five years again, and a pair of straight-out-of-REI siblings, Ronnie and Mia—whose brother died in a plane crash—stumble on the aforementioned crash site during a hike. “I’ve got remains over here,” exclaims Ronnie—five words no one ever wants to hear. Rifling through the plane, he also stumbles on a copy of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past). Cue the painful remembrances of things past—i.e., their brother’s death.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★ review here.]
The most interesting character in the show, however, isn’t one of those six squabbling sibs. It’s the broken-down taxicab-yellow Piper Cub plane, call sign 1-November-Yankee, that dominates the stage of Theater B at 59E59. Our fictional artist Ralph calls it “Civilization in Ruin”: “This exhibit embodies the breadth of the twentieth century from the Wright Brothers to a post 9/11 world—and it depicts the immense chaos of that world and a once-great-society, America, that has quite literally crashing in a heap of debris as we speak,” he explains. Maggie, meanwhile, dismisses it as “salvage.” Either way, it’s a majestic, menacing piece, a striking creation by scenic designer Dana Moran Williams.
Apparently Ralph’s sculpture gets a rave review from The New York Times—posted online within hours of its debut, while he’s still drunk—a review that, according to Maggie, “everyone in New York is going to read.” Among the other are-we-really-supposed-to-buy-this details in One November Yankee: Maggie is so cruel (or clueless) that she doesn’t realize a statement like “It’s not that I don’t like your work, I just don’t get your work” could crush the fragile-as-eggshells ego of her brother; in order to be a serious artist, one must wear black and wrap a scarf jauntily around one’s neck; Margo apparently allowed her crumbling marriage to distract her from tiny details such as filing a flight plan and checking the fuel level (silly woman!); and Harry’s Rolex, Margo’s wallet (with a wad of cash), and the wedding gift, card included, are all either inside or within mere feet of the plane after five years.
The actors fare relatively well, though Hamlin overdoes both Ralph’s drunkenness and Harry’s accent; Powers, so glam on TV’s Hart to Hart, actually looks most comfortable as the crunchy-granola gray-haired Mia. Unfortunately, none of the flesh-and-blood characters are as compelling as Crumpled Plane.
One November Yankee opened Dec. 8, 2019, and runs through Dec. 29 at 59E59. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
