Richard Greenberg calls his sprawling new play—directed, like so many of his, by Lynne Meadow—The Perplexed. It stands to reason, of course, that the title refers to the 10 characters populating a stunning Fifth Avenue, Manhattan library (Santo Loquasto, the designer).
So no, it’s not at all likely that he intends the title—not a particularly inviting one, anyway—to refer to members of the audience. Nevertheless, this particular spectator-auditor is mighty perplexed. How does one of our foremost contemporary playwrights, who can turn out comedy-dramas like, for instance, Three Days of Rain (a Pulitzer Prize finalist). The Assembled Parties, and Take Me Out (due for a local revival in a matter of weeks), uncork something so thoroughly devoid of fizzle, so unrelentingly, even annoyingly flat?
The library at hand belongs to (never seen) wealthy Jewish patriarch Berland Stahl. It’s a large but apparently tucked-away room, with smaller rooms off it, which, it’s explained, the frequently referenced Berland isn’t likely to visit. Others are: The Perplexed figures who spend much time in the capacious space. Oh, do they spend time there! Talk about assembled parties! Talk about dissembled parties! Talk about unceasingly talking parties!
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
They’re all attending a wedding that seems to go on for hours before the actual ceremony takes place. Entering and exiting—and allowing sound designer Fitz Patton to float in garbled party cheer—are bride Isabelle Stahl (Tess Fraser) and groom Caleb Resnik (JD Taylor), but they make delayed entrances. Others come and go in varying combos to apprise themselves of the troubles—many seemingly Berland-perpetuated—that have kept the Stahl-Resnik tribes at odds right up to this supposedly unifying nuptial event.
Perhaps most prominent among them is Evy Arlen-Stahl (Margaret Colin), a City Councilwoman wedded to cut-off Stahl heir Joseph (Frank Wood). Evy has her specific problems to deal with while guests celebrate elsewhere. She has raced to a watermain break more than once which means the voluminous skirt of her stylish mother-of-the-bride outfit (Rita Ryack the costumer) is soaked and then soaked worse. Not her shoes, though—evidently protective galoshes to the rescue.
Perhaps worse, depending on one’s attitude towards public and private troubles, Evy’s son, Micah (Zane Pais), a med student, has just been exposed in The New York Post as a porn star, calling himself Jaden Michaels. (Yes, you read that right.) It’s a development that could affect Evy’s political future. Although as the action unfolds (if action it is), Micah’s avocation seems to have less of an effect on those gathered than might be expected. His talk of being the recipient in sexual behavior involving urination is accepted more readily by these rich Jews, even his dad Joseph, than the average ticket buyer might guess.
The others gabbing away over two chatty acts include Evy’s cynically observant brother James (Patrick Breen); Cyrus Bloom (Eric William Morris), an ex-rabbi and an ex-many-other-careers, who’s been buttonholed to perform the knot-tying; Patricia Persaud (Anna Itty), a nurse to Berland but available to all; and pleasant Ted Resnik (Gregg Edelman) and busybody Natalie Resnik (Ilana Levine), proud parents to Caleb.
But here’s the thing: For all the blather in The Perplexed—with, say, Evy asking others to sit with her (pat, pat) on an upholstered downstage bench—nothing of any import or dramatic weight gets changed or resolved. (De-perplexed?). Surely, that’s not Greenberg’s point. Requiring audiences to pay extended attention to dialog, delivered by a conscientious acting troupe, that deliberately goes nowhere cannot be any playwright’s purpose. Yes, the Isabelle-Caleb marriage with Cyrus presiding gets going, but not, it appears, before any significant intramural progress is attained. (Incidentally, an entirely uncalled-for stage delay is caused by Cyrus being briefly encouraged to make his own play for Isabelle. Huh? Wha?)
More significantly, at too many times this gregarious bunch doesn’t sound like honest-to-goodness people talking. This goes beyond twists such as Micah’s credulity-challenging performing with mouth open before cameras. It goes beyond Natalie’s repeatedly butting in to fetch items no one wants or needs. It reaches the realm of the startling, for one instance, with Isabelle uttering this traffic-stopper: “That’s such a chilling social diagnostic.”
It’s not unusual for characters repeatedly mentioned throughout a play never to appear. And no question that Greenberg has his deliberate reasons for keeping Berland Stahl on the other side of the library door. Maybe, though, that’s a mistake. Given who Berland is described to be, were he to barrel through the much used library door, he might very well have whipped this tiresomely nattering bunch into shape.
The Perplexed opened March 3, 2020, at City Center Stage I and runs through March 29. Tickets and information: manhattantheatreclub.com
