Posted: 12/17/15 at 6:27pm
I don't disagree with your characterization of the play as a kind of stage soap, newintown, but I also don't think "soap" is a bad word. Even ANGELS IN AMERICA is very soapy, often in its most honest and cutting moments. And I'm not sure I understand the complaints about it focusing on upper-middle-class white people. Don't get me wrong; I'll never be that demographic's biggest champion, but that doesn't mean their lives can't be effectively dramatized, and in DWPH, I thought they were. The issues surrounding monogamy and open relationships and the ramifications of how their emerging macro and micro patterns will interact with the definition of marriage going forward are frequent conversation topics in my own life, and I thought the play navigated them smartly without being academic or pedantic. My date and I had a very spirited discussion afterwards. I didn't find it a perfect play (your comments on the peripheral characters are spot-on), but I did find it a very worthy one.
Maybe I wasn't bothered by the characters' social/financial positions because I found verisimilitude in them. They are, yes, on some level, shallow people, but even the shallowest people have deeper interior lives, and I thought the play spent a lot of time finding them. All of the characters start out pretty guarded, but eventually we get to the kernels of their vulnerabilities. And when we do, some fizzle and some explode, which I also thought was very true to life.
And lastly, to address the info contained behind your spoiler tag -- you're right that it's a stretch -- and certainly a plot device -- but you also know that a good writer can sell even the craziest things with proper setup and verisimilitude. And it's clear you found neither of those things at work here, but I thought it spoke to exactly the kind of couple they're presented as and exactly how prickly and insecure Breen's character is. It doesn't make them especially sympathetic, but I had no trouble buying it in the framework of the play's given circumstances.
It's funny because I'm highly allergic to the sort of lazy, manipulative, primetime-network-drama kind of writing you describe. I just don't think DWPH fits that bill.
