I caught the Wednesday matinee this week. The show didn’t drag or feel boring, and they must have tightened up the running time, since I was on the street by 4:10. It’s a noble production of fascinating play, one that feels a lot more layered and daring in its portrayal of flawed human beings than you might expect from the time period. My main issue, however, is that while the actors all do very interesting individual work, they really don’t suggest a family with all its unspoken history and tension. This felt like a series of siloed star performances rather than a unified ensemble. Perhaps this will lessen as the run progresses.
Patty McCormack, Judith Ivey and Dan Lauria were the standouts. Alma Cuervo’s performance is a little big for the space — she acts like she’s playing a thousand-seat theater, not a tiny Off-Broadway house. Lindsay Crouse made a lot of interesting choices and was ultimately successful, but her timing was somewhat off, especially in the early scenes. I liked the two younger actors quite a bit.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
