Clare Barron’s play begins simply enough. The 32-year-old Mae (Alia Shawkat) is standing with her elderly father (Peter Friedman) in his vegetable garden and discussing such things as the plants he’s growing and the medication she’s waiting to receive from the pharmacy. It turns out that she’s come to stay with him at his rural home while he deals with a serious illness. So far, so straightforward.
In the next scene, it becomes apparent that the playwright has more surreal, fantastical things in mind. Mae wakes up naked in the middle of the night to discover a cowboy (Paul Cooper) in her bedroom. He informs her that he found her outside in the snow, tied to a tree, and that he saved her life. In the process, he removed her wet clothes so they could dry. He seems a bit confused as to who exactly he’s playing in her fantasy life. When she asks his name, he replies, “Daryl. No, Luke. My name is Luke.”
Audience members may be equally confused. Barron stuffs so much ephemera into the work that emotional involvement is kept at a remove. The play, which was originally seen in a 2014 Off-Broadway production directed by Anne Kauffman (she’s staged this version as well), traffics in the sort of quirkiness for its own sake that provides mild amusement but little else. If it weren’t for the excellent performances by Shawkat and Friedman, the latter delivering an understated, moving turn, it would feel completely trivial.
An example of its silliness is the scene in which Mae encounters an old classmate, Mac (Caleb Joshua Eberhardt), while she’s nursing a beer in a bar. The two strike up a conversation in which he tells her that he had a crush on her dating back to the fourth grade. But their flirtatious conversation takes a strange turn when she confesses that, while she would be interested in a hook-up, she has a terrible rash all over her body of which she feels self-conscious. So instead of going to bed with her, Mac rubs lotion over her back in the bar while she moans in pleasure.
Later, there’s a potentially moving scene where Mae and her siblings (Misha Brooks, Nadine Malouf, Nina White) are holding vigil in the hospital room where their father is lying in bed, unconscious. Their conversation devolves into inanities about the exact nature of their family’s shared body odor, debating whether it should be described as “musty” or “like mildew” or “like something fermenting.” And then one of them distributes baseball caps to the others, explaining that it’s a trick to hide your eyes so their crying can be done in private.
A little of this sort of thing, including Mae’s repeated masturbatory fantasies involving the hunky cowboy, go a long way. It would be one thing if the silliness and surrealism were actually funny, but genuine wit is in short supply. And forget about believability. Mae is a lawyer who has recently broken up with her boyfriend who also happened to be her boss, and he fired her as a result. Why would she be looking for a new job instead of filing a massive lawsuit?
The central narrative element, involving Mae’s relationship with her dying father, could have been moving while not precluding elements of dark comedy. But the playwright throws so much triviality into her pot that you get the feeling she’s showing off rather than trying to engage us emotionally.
It’s a shame, because Kauffman has provided a first-rate staging that easily handles the play’s stylistic diversions, and Shawkat, so amusing in such sitcoms as Arrested Development and Search Party, makes us acutely aware of her character’s emotional pain while mining laughs in the process. It’s not enough to prevent the evening from succumbing to its ambitions. By the time You Get Older ends, you’ll feel older.
You Got Older opened February 23, 2026, at the Cherry Lane Theatre and runs through April 12. Tickets and information: cherrylanetheatre.org
