Theatre in Review: Dead Accounts (Music Box Theatre)

I'm beginning to think the time has come for somebody to start an Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Broadway Stars. You might think that such happy individuals don't constitute a disenfranchised minority, but, based on this season's crop of attractions, you would be wrong. More and more, our major talents are being asked to exploit their unique talents beyond all reasonable limits in the service of vehicles that pay little or nothing in return. Carolee Carmello is gifted with a powerful, even astonishing, voice, but is that any reason to make her holler her way through a dozen finale-level numbers in Scandalous? Both Patti LuPone and Debra Winger are known for their tough, mordant acting styles -- qualities they need in spades as they hack their way through the dense thickets of prose, disguised as dialogue, in The Anarchist.

And then there is Norbert Leo Butz in Dead Accounts. A gifted clown and an incisive character actor, he does everything in his power to nudge Theresa Rebeck's dialogue in the direction of authentic comedy. He delivers some lines at warp speed, throwing in eccentric pauses to keep us hanging on his next word. He tosses away some lines and bellows others. He adopts funny voices and works his talent for sarcasm for all it's worth; he even stands on the table and declaims a line or two. Really, you've never seen an actor work so hard -- although it is Butz's special gift to transmute all this effort into something that looks like high spirits.

But this pyrotechnic display of acting technique is really an attempt at performing CPR on a script that remains stubbornly unresponsive. Butz is cast as Jack, who long ago fled his native Cincinnati for the bright lights of New York, where he acquired a society wife and a glittering, high-earning job -- the nature of which is never made clear, like so much else in Dead Accounts. He appears in the middle of the night, toting a dozen cartons of ice cream, which he obtained by bribing the manager of a closed grocery store with a thousand-dollar bill. His sister, Lorna, who lives at home and hates it, is bemused, to say the least; her concerns are not allayed when, the next morning, Jack appears in the kitchen, the pockets of his robe stuffed with cash and prescription drugs. Eventually, Lorna learns, second-hand, that Jack is getting a divorce, but that sad fact doesn't begin to explain his odd behavior, especially his tendency to fill the house with epic amounts of pizzas and coney dogs. It isn't until Jenny, Jack's distinctly unamused wife, shows up, threatening him with imminent arrest, that the truth begins to leak out.

The action of Dead Accounts is almost beside the point. Yes, the author makes some easy, not terribly funny cracks about banks and the post-recession economic climate; there is a big speech denouncing the destructive nature of modern finance, but it isn't anything you haven't heard before. The play's real raison d'être is its depiction of the East Coast, Midwest culture clash. Rebeck wrote the play on a commission from the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and she certainly didn't mind pandering to her patrons. Midwesterners, we learn, are basically kind, decent people, who believe in God and community; New Yorkers are cruel, selfish, and narcissistic, interested only in money and status. In one of Dead Accounts' many low points, Jenny, on the phone to her lawyer, gleefully trashes the décor of the family's kitchen, especially the dishes. (She purports to be unaware of the existence of Corelle dinnerware.) She is quietly told off by Barbara, the mother of the house, in a scene that probably got a big hand in Cincinnati. Later, in a further demonstration of Jenny's hidebound attitudes, Jack talks about moving to Brooklyn, and she reacts with such horror that you'd think he'd suggested taking up residence in Kandahar. This is reverse cultural snobbery masquerading as satire, and it couldn't be more self-congratulatory.

Absent any sharp lines, well-defined characters, or solid construction -- there is an ailing father, whom characters check on from time from time, thus giving Rebeck a reason to get them off stage -- the cast soldiers on under the graceful direction of Jack O'Brien. Butz amuses occasionally, especially when playing down Jenny's charges of massive financial shenanigans, ("She's putting a completely negative spin on it.") but the character is increasingly grating, his problems not really compelling. Rebeck didn't bother to give Lorna a character -- we never learn if she has a job, any interests, or why she is living with her parents -- but Katie Holmes supplies her with a natural warmth and charm that go a long way toward giving her role some kind of profile. If Holmes, who has plenty going for her, wants to continue appearing in theatre, however, she should seriously consider working with a vocal coach; in her longer, angrier speeches, her voice exhibits considerable strain. (This was true also of her previous performance, in the 2008 revival of All My Sons, and it has not improved.)

As Jack and Lorna's mother, Jayne Houdyshell gives us another one of the sweetly infuriating Midwestern matrons that she has perfected since her breakthrough performance in Lisa Kron's Well. (When Lorna, exasperated at her mother's continuing allegiance to the Roman Catholic church, notes that many people don't believe in God, Barbara, pouring coffee with a smile, adds, "People who are kidding themselves." Dead Accounts could use more of her.) Josh Hamilton is likeable as Jack's high school friend, an accountant, who has pined for Lorna for two decades. Judy Greer makes Jenny into a formidably poised antagonist, although she and Jack are such a mismatch it's hard to see how they got together in the first place.

Producers rarely, if ever, ask David Rockwell to design a simple box set, but he comes up with a perfect example of a cozy family kitchen, Ohio-style, with, as an added touch, an Impressionist blaze of orange leaves in the yard outside. (Those leaves figure prominently in the little coup de théâtre at the end of the play.) David Weiner's lighting, Catherine Zuber's costumes, and Mark Bennett's sound (which makes ironic use of several arrangements of "Sentimental Journey") are more than up to the Broadway standard.

If only that were true of the play; Dead Accounts feels like something written to fulfill a commission, while the author's inspiration was on holiday. It's a play badly in need of a reason for being, something no amount of star power can provide.--David Barbour