There’s good news and bad news about Downstairs, Theresa Rebeck’s new play at off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre.
First, the good news: It stars the dynamite real-life brother and sister Tim and Tyne Daly in their first-ever joint New York stage appearance. (Rebeck wrote the play, which premiered in 2017 at Vermont’s Dorset Theatre Festival, specifically for the pair.) The Dalys play—you guessed it—siblings Teddy (Tim) and Irene (Tyne). Teddy is adrift—you can tell as soon as he emerges from the bathroom in his underwear—and living, for the moment, in Irene’s cluttered basement. Irene wants to help her younger brother, but fears the wrath of her bullying husband, Gerry (John Procaccino).
Though they’re cast as siblings, both actors—who have portrayed, collectively, such authoritative figures as a doctor, a pilot, a police officer, and a stage mother—are playing terrifically against type. Teddy is coming apart at the seams; he believes he was poisoned by a coworker who stabbed him with a pencil. “I’m telling you this has been going on for years. I have wounds everywhere,” he tells Irene. “My hands shake. I can’t sleep. The poison is just, I’m so toxic you can’t even touch me anymore, if you touched me something terrible will happen to you.”
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★ review here.]
Irene, meanwhile, is a mousy housewife who thinks mailing a package at the post office is a “completely overwhelming” experience. “Packing materials they’re kind of frightening if you have to look at them closely,” she explains. Even getting dressed is an ordeal for her: “All these clothes. I can’t remember why I put them in my closet. I can’t remember what I thought was pretty about any of them.… They look kind of mean to me. I thought about that one day. All my clothes kind of don’t like me.”
And now for the bad news: Despite the Dalys’ best efforts, Downstairs is almost as adrift as poor Teddy. It starts as a quietly intriguing dysfunctional-family drama—Irene and Teddy’s mom had issues as well (Teddy calls her “mean and crazy,” while Irene, more forgiving, describes her as “very fragile”), takes a whiplash-inducing turn into thriller territory (an ancient computer with a suitcase-size hard drive stands in for the smoking gun), then settles back very briefly into the brother-sister story.
Rebeck has crafted two extremely captivating characters: Teddy is much smarter than he seems, even if he doesn’t spit out his toothpaste before he starts eating his dry cereal; and Irene, despite all outward appearances, is really the one in need of help. Taking any focus away from them feels almost unfair. (This isn’t a knock against Procaccino’s performance; he makes a fine villain. His character simply feels like an intrusion.) Much like the basement itself—stuffed with piles of about-to-burst cardboard boxes, rusty tools, and a burnt-orange sofa that on its best day couldn’t be called vintage (the fantastic set is by Narelle Sissons)—there’s a lot to unpack.
Downstairs opened Nov. 18, 2018, and runs through Dec. 22 at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Tickets and information: primarystages.org
