Theatre in Review: The Assembled Parties (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)The Assembled Parties takes place on two Christmas Days, in 1980 and 2000. In the intervening decades, just about everything happens to those in attendance -- and yet somehow, improbably, almost defiantly, life goes on. If that sounds banal, all I can say is, you haven't seen The Assembled Parties. In Act I of Richard Greenberg's elusive, yet cunningly constructed, drama, two interrelated families are celebrating Christmas -- everyone is Jewish, but what the heck, it's a holiday -- in an Upper West Side apartment so vast that even regular visitors get lost in its corridors. It's the home of Ben and Julie Bascov, a well-off and apparently contented couple in their late 40s. Scott, their older son, is just out of college and unsure of what happens next; he's also feeling the weight of his parents' expectations. (Not that he should feel pressured, but the probability of a Jewish president is often discussed.) Their younger son, Timmy, is in bed with the flu. Also in attendance are Faye, Ben's sister; her husband, Mort; and their daughter, Shelley, a trio that forms a less happy family unit. The marriage of Faye and Mort is a loveless accommodation; they are principally united in dismay at Shelley, whose aspirations stop at being a sales clerk at Alexander's. (Like she says, "You get a paycheck every Thursday. What could be better?") Other disturbances lurk beneath the holiday surface. Ben and Faye's mother is dying, and Faye, driven to distraction by the old lady's hatred, is subsisting on a diet of tranquilizers. Mort, practicing a little discreet blackmail on Ben, extracts a strange promise in exchange for not casting suspicions on Ben's marital fidelity. Having returned from Africa, Scotty doesn't feel so well. And Jeff, Scotty's best friend -- who is at Harvard Law School, causing deep envy in Scotty's parents -- is a mild, agreeable fellow who nevertheless takes part in a rancorous phone call with his mother, savagely attacking her "shtetl mentality." Twenty years later, some of these characters are dead, some are dying, others are estranged, and others have -- to put it mildly -- failed to reach their full potential. It's almost impossible to describe the second act -- to do so would be virtually one long spoiler alert -- but Greenberg is interested in the erosions of time and how it rearranges the patterns of his characters' lives. There are some terrible surprises and a couple of amusing twists of fate; most of all, there is the awareness that each present moment, however pleasurable, contains the seeds of losses to come. As Jeff notes, there is something especially solid and seemingly durable -- something essentially New York -- about the Bascov's existence. As Greenberg reveals, it is built on sand. Lynne Meadow's deft production is anchored by three superb performances. Jessica Hecht is beguiling as Julie, whose slightly scattered, genteel-screwball manner hides a shockingly unsentimental heart. "I guess I've just been borne along to pleasant places," she says, and don't you believe it. Raised by a single mother devoted more to her couture business than motherhood, Julie fell into a brief period of Hollywood stardom -- her main asset was not looking like Sandra Dee, she recalls -- before marrying Ben. Her great gift is the ability to live gracefully in the moment; her sorrow is the awareness that it cannot last. "A cheerful nature is an utterly ruthless thing," she says, and her ability to survive almost anything -- summed up in a stunning Act II speech -- shows just what she means. Judith Light's Faye is equally a survivor, if more willing to display her hard edges. She is also a riot: "Republican Jews. What is that? Like skinny fat people?" she says, complaining once again about the government while insisting that she is apolitical. Faye has had a rougher ride in life and the strain is showing: "Life was so good during Miltown, Benny," she says, waxing nostalgic for the sedations of yore. "She's a broken sparrow of a woman with the grip of Rocky Graziano," she says of the demented parent who occasionally marshals enough of her wits to denounce her daughter. Unlike the Bascovs, Julie is a German Jew, which, Faye says, "to my Galician mother meant a shiksa with a problem." There's real anguish under the wisecracks, however; in one of the play's most touching moments, Faye reveals the deathbed gesture from her mother that seemingly healed decades of acrimony -- a gesture that we know is based on a lie. As Jeff, the outsider drawn into the Bascov family web, Jeremy Shamos delivers a delicately rendered, yet thoroughly believable, study of a loner, his career a success and his personal life a series of missed opportunities. Recalling for Ben and Julie how Scotty met his girlfriend, he unwittingly exposes how much he wanted the young lady for himself. When, years later, Jeff returns from a long sojourn in Chicago and Julie asks what happened to him there, the sad resignation on Shamos' face speaks volumes. He also finds the character's inner toughness, especially when Jeff puts the screws on one of Julie's inattentive sons, all but blackmailing him to show up for dinner. There are also fine contributions from Mark Blum as the genial, corrupt Mort, and Jonathan Walker as Ben, who hides his anxieties behind a studiedly casual manner. (Jake Silbermann excels in a pair of roles, about which I can say no more, without giving away too much.) The plush physical production is led by Santo Loquasto's set design, which makes use of a turntable to constantly reveal ever more rooms in the palatial Bascov apartment. Peter Kaczorowski's beautifully modulated lighting adds texture and depth to each scene. Jane Greenwood's costumes take note of the differences between two eras and also are carefully tailored to each character. (Julie has saved many of her mother's mid-century designs, which allows Greenwood to present Hecht at one point in a stunning copper-colored satin evening dress.) Obadiah Eaves' sound design provides solid reinforcement for the music that links each scene. It's not for nothing that, at one point, the name of Louis Auchincloss is raised; the ultimate New York insider -- and a relative of Edith Wharton -- he chronicled the lives of the city's upper classes in dozens of novels. Greenberg also focuses on privileged New Yorkers, most of whom, for reasons of ethnicity or background or achievement, live outside the gilded confines of the Upper East Side. Still, both men come to surprisingly similar conclusions; money and tradition provide no safety from the depredations of time, and the decision to keep going can require great courage. It's a form of grace under pressure, a state of mind Greenberg has never explored more movingly than in The Assembled Parties.--David Barbour 
|
