Relatively Speaking

       An evening of one act plays written by the likes of Ethan Cohen, Elaine May, and Woody Allen would probably seem like a great idea to anyone. The premise for each roughly 30-40 minute play seemed interesting enough. Each one would tackle a different area of "family" or "life events". The cast assembled was a mix of seasoned professionals and a few up and coming actors. The director (John Turturo) is adept as both an actor and a director. This left audiences (myself included) wondering, what went wrong?

     Lets start with the material. Relatively Speaking is made up of three one act plays by the aforementioned playwrights. Each one act must be judged individually, and also as part of the larger whole.  Ethan Cohen's Talking Cure was the first horse out of the gate. The play concerns a prison Psychiatrist who is trying to understand why a former Postal Worker - err, went postal so to speak, on a customer. There is some very amusing back and forth between the Dr. and the Patient, and the subject of childhood and parental guidance is eventually brought up. Just in the middle of this, the set splits in two and we see the patients parents before he as born, and we are meant to possibly understand through this quick encounter how he got to be where he is today.

    The problem is (and is often the case with one act plays of this nature) that we are not given what feels like a complete story. The performances are fine. Jason Kravits and Danny Hoch are quite good as Dr. and Patient, while Katherine Borowitz and Allen Lewis Rickman shine as mother and father. The whole thing is just a bit confusing, and feels slightly underdone.

   George is Dead by Elaine May, in contrast, does feel like a fully formed story. The characters are three dimensional (most of the time) and even though you can tell that something has happened before the action begins, you get a sense that you are seeing a complete story. We open on Carla, a woman who appears to be in her early 40's, stressing over an argument she had with her live in boyfriend when she is interrupted by Doreen, a woman of an indeterminate age but older by at least 15 years than Carla who announces that her husband, George, is dead.

    This is the funniest of all three plays, because it is the most fully developed, and also has the added benefit of Marlo Thomas playing Doreen. Ms. Thomas is probably about 10 years too old (if not 20 years too old) to be playing Doreen, but she makes it work with aplomb. Grant Shaud and Lisa Emery also give extremely nuanced performances as Carla and her boyfriend Michael.

    This brings us to what many I would imagine, expected to be the highlight of the evening, Woody Allen's Honeymoon Hotel. We are met with a man in a tux and a woman in a bridal gown entering a cheap, sleazy, honeymoon suite and a cheap and sleazy roadside motel. They speak of the wedding, how much they love each other, and how much they cannot wait to start the honeymoon. There is a knock at the door, and it is the man in the tux brother. We learn that the man in tux is in fact NOT the groom, but the grooms father who has run away with the bride. The rest of the wedding party files in eventually including the rest of the parents, the actual groom, and the rabbi who was to have performed the ceremony.

    The play itself is not that bad. It's not Woody Allen's best work by any means, but it's really not that bad. Part of the problem is that it both begins and ends awkwardly, and feels like it belongs in 1995 rather than in 2011. The other problem is the casting. Nearly everyone is miscast. Steve Gutenberg and Grant Shaud withstanding, nearly everyone else is terrible in their roles. Julie Kavner is doing her best, but unfortunately she doesn't have much to work with.

   As a whole evening of theater, these plays are so unevenly matched that though there is the common thread of family that binds them together, it's a very thin, white, barely visible thread. The set and costume designs were hit or miss, and as I said the casting was also inconsistent.

    Relatively Speaking closed on Broadway at The Brooks Atkinson Theater on January 29th 2012. Marlo Thomas is really the only Tony Nomination the play can hope for. Considering it's large ensemble cast, and the marquis value of it's three writers, I would imagine that Relatively Speaking will live on in regional and community theaters. Though a Broadway revival is pretty unlikely.