Theatre in Review: This Day Forward (Vineyard Theatre)

	Michael Crane, Holley Fain. Photo: Carol Rosegg

When Nicky Silver's plays, like The Lyons or Raised in Captivity, really work, they function as perfectly layered servings of hilarity and sadness. If the balance isn't precisely maintained, however, the whole thing is subject to collapse. In This Day Forward, the action begins with what looks to be a solid Silver situation. The curtain rises on a sumptuous suite at the St. Regis Hotel, occupied by the newly married Martin and Irene. They're alone at last, with a bottle of champagne on the way, and Martin is eager for the honeymoon to proceed -- but Irene is oddly skittish, fending off each of his advances with increasing anxiety. Well, it is 1958, and maybe Irene is an inexperienced woman of her time. (At first, the scene, in its wisecracking way, is oddly reminiscent of the third act of Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, in which the bride locks herself in the bathroom on her wedding day.) Finally, after considerable back-and-forth, interrupted by Martin's attempts at separating Irene from her wedding gown and getting her into bed, she spills the beans: "I don't love you," she says.

Not only does Irene not love Martin -- who comes from a good Jewish family and has a good position in the family business -- she is in love with Emil, a gas station attendant with no prospects whatsoever. If love is the word I want: When Emil shows up -- of course, he does -- he and Irene carry on like a road-company Stanley and Stella, waving their arms, screaming, and falling into steamy embraces. (You can forget the idea that Irene is a virgin, too; she has had sex with Emil three times, just that morning -- and these weren't the first encounters, either.) While Martin is reeling from this news, others are added to the mix, including a know-it-all Polish maid and her son, the bellboy, a kleptomaniac homosexual, both of whom feel free to advise Irene on her choices.

The problem with this kind of comedy is the falseness of the premise; in setting up what will prove to be more than one generation of family misery, the playwright isn't playing fair with us. We can accept all sorts of bizarre complications if the play begins with a recognizable simulation of reality; if it doesn't, the action has nowhere to go. Irene's big revelation isn't suitable to Silver's purposes. It's a sketch-comedy joke, good for ten minutes or so of fun, and also possibly workable if inserted into a larger farce scheme; as the starting point for a family saga spanning five decades, it's dead in the water. Instead of taking in the damage being done -- the scene ends with a physical blow, which, we learn, is only the beginning for Martin and Irene -- we're sitting there, questioning everything we see. Did Martin really not notice that Irene wasn't excited about their impending marriage? Did Irene really think marrying just anyone would solve her problems? Who are these people and why should we care about them? As presented, Irene is a narcissistic schemer and Martin is unbelievably thick, and the fact that they have made it to this honeymoon suite is too much to swallow.

The second act jumps ahead to 2004. Martin is dead, and Irene, enfeebled by age and a lifetime of disappointment, is a trial to her beleaguered adult children. Even with her tendency to slip in and out of a mental fog, she's a handful; in her latest escapade, she has tried to board a plane at JFK in her pajamas, and how she got there from her daughter's house in Connecticut is anybody's guess. (She was trying to return to Acapulco, the scene of her disastrous honeymoon, for reasons that never become clear.) Sheila, her daughter, is at her wit's end; in the play's funniest sequence, she describes, with mounting rage, the frustration of taking Irene to the Dollar Store, where the old lady picks up each item, asking, "How much is this?"

Unable to tolerate Irene any longer, Sheila has called a summit meeting with her brother, Noah, a theatre director and self-loathing homosexual. Crashing this party is Leo, Noah's boyfriend, an actor who is getting sick and tired of being treated as a mere convenience. (The story of how Noah and Leo met is detailed in an awkwardly inserted flashback that seems like an attempt at humanizing Noah, who, sad to say, remains a pill throughout.) This act is closer to the acid family farce that is Silver's specialty and it certainly has its moments. I rather like Sheila's account of how Irene attacked her son-in-law over the dinner table with a corn cob holder, Irene's triumphant assertion to Noah that she made him gay, and her late-in-life attachment to the novels of Judy Blume. But because we've gotten off on the wrong foot with this family, we never really develop any rooting interest in their fates. A hastily arranged ending, which belatedly begs for our emotional involvement, certainly doesn't help.

That Mark Brokaw's direction never finds its comic footing may not be his fault, given the insubstantial material he has to work with. Still, the cast does its best. Michael Crane is convincing, both as the gobsmacked Martin and the selfish, snappish Martin, who, even with his history of being abused, isn't easy to put up with. Holley Fain works hard at deciphering the young Irene, but the character doesn't really make any sense. Andrew Burnap is amusing as that thieving bellboy and attractive enough as Leo that you want him to head off to the nearest gay bar to find an emotionally available man. June Gable is pretty funny as that dictatorial maid, but less effective as the elderly Irene, who doesn't make it into the pantheon of Silver's maternal monsters. Joe Tippett livens things up as Emil, especially in a well-staged fight scene, and Francesca Faridany proves her skill at handling typical Silver arias of fury as the fed-up Sheila.

The play looks like a million bucks, thanks to Allen Moyer's renderings of the hotel suite, all white with gilded details, and of Noah's chic Midtown apartment, with its view of Grand Central Station. David Lander's lighting is filled with subtle modulations; he creates an especially alluring look for a moment when Irene, slipping into the past, talks to the dead. Kaye Voyce's costumes are true to both periods and also attractive and suitable to each character. David Van Tieghem provides an appealing playlist of jazz tunes, including -- most ironically -- an arrangement of "I Want to Be Happy" (fat chance, with this bunch) as well as original music.

But this is material that Silver has handled better in other plays. There's little comedy, because the characters don't behave like recognizable human beings. And there's not much tragedy, because there isn't anything for them to lose. This is a notably mild effort, not a quality one generally associates with this distinctive writer. -- David Barbour