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Past Reviews Off Broadway Reviews |
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For set designer Andrew Lieberman has designed not one room of the Inn, but five—it just so happens that all the rooms are identical and occupy the same set—and Gurney has populated them with ten powerfully vivid characters that span not Gurney's usual realm of well-heeled northern families but instead the full spectrum of the American experience of the play's late-1970s setting. (And, well, pretty much the American experience at any era.) That their lives are conducted both figuratively and literally on top of each other, with successes, heartbreaks, assignations, and even dialogue overlapping constantly, but none of it ever becomes confusing, difficult to follow, or even the slightest bit mechanical is a tribute as much to the heroic efforts of director Lila Neugebauer as to Gurney's writing. And there, dear reader, is where this review becomes considerably more difficult. Because those stories unfold and expand over the full running time, The Wayside Motor Inn is the functional equivalent of ten plays in one, with far too much happening for any abbreviated synopsis to contain. You can say, and be absolutely correct, that a myriad of age ranges and classes are represented, and through their almost completely silent interplay—interactions between characters in separate rooms do occur, but such instances are rare and always temporary—reveal a country and a people at a cultural and economic turning point that closely echoes many of the discussions facing (and dividing) us today. (Though an earlier draft of the play was workshopped in the 1970s, this is its world premiere.) But such an analysis, even taking in the Biblical reference that provides its title (Matthew 13:4 or Mark 4:4, about seeds falling by the wayside and being devoured by birds), is insufficient. For the full picture, you really do need to experience first-hand the collage of traveling businessman Ray (Quincy Dunn-Baker) and older couple Frank and Jessie (Jon DeVries and Lizbeth Mackay), on a trip from far away to visit their grown children—the smiling, sleazy dishonesty of a man juxtaposed against two people who are lying to themselves about what they can and can't do with the remainder of their lives. Or Vince (Marc Kudisch), who's arrived with his teenage son Mark (Will Pullen), in advance of a Harvard interview Vince has used his connections to ensure Mark will ace, even though the boy wants nothing of it. Or Phil and Sally (David McElwee and Ismenia Mendes), two early-twentysomethings who are ostensibly looking for a safe place to have sex for the night, but are really trying to understand the nuances of their evolving relationship. Or Andy (Kelly AuCoin), a doctor who's in the process of divorcing his wife, Ruth (Rebecca Henderson), and is working to hang on to the threads of love and connection that remain between them. Each tale, each pairing (Ray's match, so to speak, is the truth-telling, conspiracy-minded coffee-shop waitress Sharon, played with gum-chewing brio by Jenn Lyon), adds to the work's unique texture, and is compelling (if rarely especially complex) in its own right. And the actors are superbly cast, finding the utmost intensity in their everyday interactions and making you care more about these simple people than you may have thought possible. Only Kudisch seems to be deploying garden-variety tactics in crafting Vince; he piles on the bluster a bit heavily and the emotional colorings lighter than is ideal. But watching, as but two examples of dozens, the layers of meaning couched in every one of DeVries's grimaces as Frank is wracked with pain while struggling to make it on his own, or the desperation Pullen finds in showing the many ways Mark is flailing in asserting himself and his own wishes to be an auto mechanic rather than an Ivy League Man, is truly captivating. Gurney wrote in a note in the script that he hopes that with this method of storytelling he "can make the ordinary seem somehow extraordinary, just as several simple melodies enhance each other when they are interwoven in a musical ensemble piece." That's a lofty goal that I'm not sure he entirely achieves. Conceptually it all works, and each of the ten individual plots is fully satisfying. But it never quite adds up to as much as it feels like it should, especially with a concluding scene (in which, naturally, most everyone leaves their rooms for one reason or another) that's weaker and less precise than everything that precedes it, so a greater point—beyond painting the grand, diverse, and troubled panoply that is America—is lost just when it should most readily be found. So good is nearly everything else, however, that even that stumble is not enough to cause The Wayside Motor Inn to fall by the wayside. And as an example of acting and direction at among the highest levels New York has to offer, you'll happily devour it yourself—and still be craving more.
The Wayside Motor Inn
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