BWW Consensus: THE AMERICAN PLAN?

Limelight:

I'm seeing this on Sunday matinee. During my 4show/2day weekend! I'll report in!

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I didn't care for the play itself. My one comment coming out if it was wondering why Greenberg is always being revived on Broadway. I don't get why he's held to such high esteem. The play has its moments, and the opening scene was intriguing enough, but the "twists and turns" the show makes just seemed pointless. I felt like I was suppose to be shocked, but I could really care less. The pace was pretty slow as well, and I'm not sure why the character of the 'maid' is in the play. It seems like such a throwaway role.

My mistake.

I must've misread: "The American Plan is a play by Richard Greenberg. It was first produced and performed by Manhattan Theatre Club[1] Stage II on January 23, 1990, in New York City, where it ran for 32 performances. The original cast included Rebecca Miller, Tate Donovan, Beatrice Winde, Joan Copeland, and Eric Stoltz."

Wikipedia really doesn't help with this entry. At all.

I don't know WHY I didn't associate Stage II with Off-Broadway, I guess I just glanced-over that part.

I saw it.

It's a rather crappy play, to say the least, and the set design is uglier than sin. A series of what look like K-Mart shower curtains with wilderness scenes on them and a what looks like a cheaply built pier or dock in the middle of the stage that doubles for a lot of things.

I kept asking myself - "Why am I watching this? Why was this written? Why are we supposed to care?"

The surprises/plot twists are lame, and the overall result by the end is a big shrug of the shoulders.

That said, the cast is excellent, and it is always a pleasure to see Mercedes on stage, anywhere. And, PS - for the ladies and for the boys who like boys, there is some really yummy eye candy on display in the first scene.

I fell in love with the play when I read it 12 years ago, but I've never seen it performed. I was really hoping to see the Broadway production, but alas, it is simply not meant to be.

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I read the play a few weeks ago. The problem, I think, is that the wonderful first act (especially in the nicely subtle finale) promises that certain ideas will be carried into the second act and resolved.

And then you get to the second act, and Greenberg gets confused as to how he wants to express them. First you have a small twist with the mother (who you never really figure out by play's end), and then a big twist that doesn't, at first, seem to have to do with anything. By the end of the play, the theme has shifted almost entirely to something else than what was promised at the end of Act I, and an audience gets confused.

But, of course, Greenberg's writing is hilarious (Lili: 'Simon Says: A witless unseen despot who derives his authority from God-knows-where instructs you to deform yourself in truly revolting ways; and if you dare, even accidentally, to act without his permission, you're exterminated. My mother says it's a great game for Jews.' Nick: 'I'm sorry - but I don't find that funny.' Lili: 'But my mother IS a Jew - '), and even with the play's confusion, Lili is a heartwrenching character (espeicially in the last scene with her mother).

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Updated On: 1/13/09 at 09:35 AM

I didn't notice it. I was too busy noticing the ugly set and trying to figure out if I was in a theatre, or in the shower curtain department at Bed Bath and Beyond.