Theatre in Review: The Reservoir (Atlantic Theater Company)Noah Galvin is the nominal star of The Reservoir, but, really, he is the emcee of it. To be sure, his character, Josh, has plenty of problems, which are aired in some detail in this nervous, tentatively serious comedy, and like most protagonists, he undergoes significant changes. But his main function is to introduce and serve as a foil to the crack team of character actors who keep stealing focus in Shelley Butler's production. Indeed, the cast is quite a den of thieves. Some of them play multiple roles, like Heidi Armbruster as Josh's embattled mother; Patricia, a fiercely go-getting fitness trainer; a rabbi; and an alarmingly self-confident self-help guru, and Matthew Saldivar as a world-weary Russian doctor, a poker-faced guidance counselor, and a depressed bookstore manager with a shelf's worth of secrets. Then there's the quartet of Josh's grandparents, beginning with Mary Beth Peil as Irene, lost to dementia but ready to burst into "O Come All Ye Faithful" over the lunch table, and Peter Maloney as her husband Hank, a genial old duffer who, nonetheless, is capable of shunning erring grandchildren, even disinviting them from his upcoming funeral. Ruthlessly bagging laughs are Caroline Aaron as no-nonsense Beverly ("I mean, I wish I hadn't irreparably fucked up my children, but hey, you win some, you lose some.") and Chip Zien as Shrimpy, her ex. ("That woman remembers when you left the screen door ajar in 1973.") It's a three-ring family circus, and it's a lucky thing that the production has a young leading man who can hold his own. (Galvin is a skilled listener, responding to his elders' verbal antics with an entire gallery of deadpan/nonplussed looks.) However, Josh is hanging on by his fingernails; he's a college-age trainwreck, given to blackout drunks and self-harm. The play begins with him waking up outdoors, in Denver, his hometown, with no memory of getting there. This, he notes, is par for the course: "One time I went to a club in Brooklyn and woke up three days later at a Chick-fil-A in West Virginia." Patricia, unhappy about Josh's surprise homecoming, at first bars him from her house; she eventually lets him stay but forces him to pass a daily breathalyzer test. To keep him out of trouble, she gets him a job at a local bookstore, stacking shelves, although he insists his "broken brain" impairs his ability to alphabetize. Alarmed at Irene's checked-out state and Shrimpy's early-stage Alzheimer's, he delves into the store's collection of books on alcohol and memory, launching a full-bore campaign to shore up all four grandparents' cognitive skills. His program, grudgingly accepted by them, includes exercise, plenty of protein, and enough raw spinach to feed a large rabbit farm. But, as Bev cannily notes, it's a trumped-up wellness program that exists for Josh to avoid his own problems; this becomes clear when a traumatic event propels him into the nearest grocery store for an extra-large bottle of 70-proof vanilla extract. In its best moments, The Reservoir nimbly skates between big laughs to hard truths, especially when Josh is being held to account for his brazenly self-destructive behavior. But there's a catch: The playwright, Jake Brasch, describes himself in the program as a "writer, performer, composer, and clown," and often the latter role dominates. Like Josh, who distracts from his troubles with jokes, the script indulges in one-liners when it should be probing more acutely. Playing his addiction for laughs, Josh recalls "the group therapy place NYU forced me to go to before I was kicked out for chugging six Smirnoff Ices in the bathroom and then singing the entirety of Whitney Houston's 'I Have Nothing' during a group therapy session." Non-sequitur gags abound: Shrimpy prowls the bookstore, asking, "Where's the fiction at? I wanna buy a copy of The Fountainhead for my gastroenterologist." Also tossed in is some tired kidding of avant-garde theatre: Josh's thesis project is "an autobiographical experimental site-specific opera that's staged entirely in the NYU Drama Department bathroom." There's a difference between jokes that cut to the heart of the characters' troubles and gagging for its own sake, and The Reservoir doesn't always know the difference. Even more damaging, Josh often comes across as a walking set of symptoms rather than a fully realized character. We never learn much family history (his parents are divorced, his father is absent) or his personal life (he's gay, but with no boyfriends, or even friends, in evidence). He's a theatre major with little obvious interest in the art form, and, aside from one or two references, his drinking history is not illuminated. (The play flirts with the interesting idea that Irene, the most heartbreakingly vulnerable of the play's senior set, subtly cut Josh out of her life after learning of his sexual orientation, but said idea gets dropped.) Josh is a collection of attitudes, and, without an actor of Galvin's charm and presence, he might vanish altogether. Also, Butler's production has some distinctly odd design aspects. Takeshi Kata's set mostly consists of blue chiffon headers and side curtains, a strangely arbitrary concept; it's not easy creating an environment for a script that moves like a screenplay, but there's no need to make the stage look like an anonymous multipurpose space. Aside from some awkward cues when the action moves in and out of Josh's head, Jiyoung Chang's lighting is solid; she works well with sound designer Kate Marvin, combining flickering lighting and an insistent drumbeat to suggest an anxiety attack, and pairing explosions with strobe effects when Josh goes on a bender. Sara Ryung Clement's costumes are especially helpful in profiling Armbruster and Saldivar's many characters. For all its bracing honesty, The Reservoir also has its Hollywoodish moments, for example, the 80-year-old Shrimpy's bar mitzvah, where, thanks to his ailment, he struggles to remember his Torah portion. But that's how the play operates, disarming us with humor, then switching gears, making painfully mordant points before retreating into feel-good territory. As previously noted, Brasch is a writer to watch, and the Atlantic is smart to showcase his writing, aided by such a top-flight cast. But a little less clowning around would deepen this Reservoir to no end.--David Barbour 
|
