Corrections or additions?
This review by Simon Saltzman was prepared for the November 3,
2004
issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Broadway Review: Reckless
The Manhattan Theater Club has found it difficult to get a hit into
its new Broadway venue, the elegantly refurbished Biltmore Theater.
They still haven’t struck gold, but at least “Reckless,” a
co-production with the Second Stage Theater, has Tony-winner (“Proof”)
Mary-Louise Parker giving a lovably quirky performance to cherish.
Parker, who interestingly played a supporting role in the 1995 film
version, is now the central character in this revival of Craig Lucas’s
serio-comic play that was originally produced by the Circle Repertory
Company in 1988.
Lucas, the author of such commendable plays as “Prelude to a Kiss,”
“Blue Window,” and The Dying Gaul, couldn’t have found a better
director than Mark Brokaw to guide Parker through his erupting terrain
of heightened reality, dreams, and delusions. The dark adventures of a
suburban, emotionally stranded housewife who goes on the run after
learning that her husband has taken a contract out on her life, tries
to be a metaphysical exploration of destiny, a heartbreaking look into
the effects of disenchantment, and the cost of fulfillment. Lucas
certainly knows how to handle these meaty issues felicitously, if not
especially lucidly.
It’s Christmas (we know that because it’s snowing outside and “I’ll Be
Home for Christmas” is being played somewhere on high). While their
two children are tucked safely into bed, Rachel (Parker) is cuddled up
in bed with her husband Tom (Thomas Sadoski). “I’m having one of my
euphoric attacks,” she admits in anticipation of everything, including
a Christmas morning, that seems so imminently blissful in her life.
But the euphoria is short lived when her husband is suddenly no longer
the Santa of her dreams as he admits, “I’ve taken a contract out on
your life.”
A last-minute change of heart by Tom instigates Rachel’s hasty exit in
bathrobe and slippers through the bedroom window just as the hired hit
man is heard entering the house. So begins Rachel’s new life — or is
it a dream? — in which she is discovered in a highway telephone booth
and subsequently befriended by a possibly too-good-to-be-true physical
therapist, Lloyd (Michael O’Keefe). Lloyd takes Rachel home to his
wife, Pooty (Rosie Perez, the role that Parker played in the film), a
deaf paraplegic. They even get a job for Rachel at a world charity
organization.
Could this be the start of a new beginning for Rachel, or is she about
to discover that even given another chance, she is going to discover
that people are rarely whom they appear to be and that we are all set
adrift in a serendipitous world? In a series of outrageously
contrived, but conceptually inescapable, situations, Rachel finds
herself having to deal not only with her fear of discovery, but with
the concealed emotional states and hidden pasts of a pair of
well-meaning self deceivers and an embezzling bookkeeper (Olga
Merediz), at the organization.
The play, unfortunately, flounders for too long in a grotesque and
protracted quiz show segment and a preposterous poisoning by a lunatic
embezzler. Rachel’s bouts with six analysts, all played by Debra Monk,
are rather witless and redundant. The play tries very hard to balance
an upside down world with gravity. Designer Allen Moyer’s whimsical
settings suggest that it’s all make-believe. The discovery that life
is not a forward march, but rather concentric circles wherein the past
and future reside, is only part of Rachel’s somewhat disorienting path
to rediscovery. The other part is the recognition that her dreams,
like her life, are interchangeable.
Brokaw (who also directed Lucas’s “Stranger” and “The Dying Gaul,” a
much better play) has directed with an acute ear and eye for the
playwright’s vision. The cast is fine given the cartoon nature of
their characters. More dimensions are afforded Parker, who appears
sensitized to every aspect of Rachel’s persona, from skittish
immaturity to na‹ve adaptability, and finally to her more illuminated
womanhood. Monk has a flashy assignment bringing diversity to six
clueless analysts. She also plays a nun whose past as a school bus
driver is a little too conveniently tied to Rachel’s life. Pooty is
perkily played by Perez of film and TV fame. O’Keefe gets to do a
turnaround from comforting to comatose as the conflicted Claude.
Sadosky also returns as Tom and Rachel’s son in a climactic scene
designed to bring the play full circle. But then, this is a play
calculated to keep you going in circles.
– Simon Saltzman
Reckless, Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street. For tickets call
212-232-5200.
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