Ah, the well-written, literate, funny, moving play. One does not encounter this anomaly often, and yet it is happening onstage at The Beckett Theatre @Theatre Row, in The Clockwork Theatre’s production of Jeff Daniels’ (yes, that Jeff Daniels) Apartment 3A. Mr. Daniels last appeared in April 2007, magnificently, with Alison Pill, off-Broadway in David Harrower’s Blackbird. He does not come to on or off-Broadway often (he is the founder of The Purple Rose Theatre Company in Michigan); clearly, Mr. Daniels chooses his material carefully. He brings the same care and clarity to Apartment 3A.
Annie, a young-ish woman who works as a fundraiser for Public Television (Marianna McClellan) has suffered a life crisis. In haste, she has fled her old neighborhood, arriving at her new rental, Apartment 3A. The plainspoken super, Dal (Philip J. Cutrone) shows her around: “You’re desperate to rent this place, aren’t you“ Annie says to him. “Not as desperate as you are,” he says, and he’s right. She then meets Donald (Doug Nyman), her enigmatic and ingratiating new neighbor across the hall. Donald possesses something that Annie wants, but she’s not quite sure what that is.
At Channel 68, Annie is passionate about her job: about the future of Public Television and about saving Sesame Street (her “live” address to camera in Act 1, when she moves quickly from nice and pleasant to belligerent child-frightener, is hilarious.) Her co-worker Elliot (Jay Rohloff) is passionate also – about Annie. He asks her to lunch. To Annie, lunch is a terrifying metaphor: for love, sex and their entire future. “Aren’t you putting a little too much pressure on the midday meal?” asks her newfound friend and confidant, Donald. “I think of it as dining defensively,” Annie says.
That lunch begins disastrously with Elliot announcing that he is a Catholic, and Annie immediately responding by saying she does not believe in God. What could have been a boorish or dogmatic argument turns into one of the best philosophical discussions on the existence of God I’ve seen staged (or heard, actually; normally, with these conversations, eventually there’s bloodshed. Or a food fight.) Throw in mating polar bears (I cannot explain, for fear of ruining) and there is a shifting tango of a triangle between Annie, Elliot, and Donald that eventually, movingly becomes a waltz.
Under the lucid direction of Owen M. Smith, Marianna McClellan effortlessly conveys a wounded woman searching for some sort of truth, alternately passionate and fearful, and utterly real. Jay Rohloff’s lovely Elliot is equally her match: for her he will wait, believe in miracles, and, occasionally, growl. Elliot makes one want to believe. As for Doug Nyman’s Donald, he displays much of the genius and is reminiscent of a younger, straight-playing Nathan Lane. There is a necessary charisma that Donald must have. Nyman makes it look astonishingly easy. All of the actors, however, are very fortunate; they have Jeff Daniels’ words (both lovingly and at times, uproariously written) to speak. At Apartment 3A, the play is the thing.
