The playwright Jenny Schwartz begins God’s Ear, directed by Anne Kaufman at the Vineyard Theatre, with a very simple premise: a couple have lost a son to an accidental drowning, and are dealing with their grief along with their surviving daughter. Beyond that, nothing about the play is simple, or clear. It seems that Schwartz has put most of her effort into deconstructing the story as well as the language of the play, so mostly, during the couple’s conversations, the mother, Mel (Christina Kirk, fine in an incredibly difficult part)) speaks to her husband, Ted (Gibson Frazier, also fine) in streams of aphorisms, and the longer this goes on, the more irritating it gets. This technique goes overboard in illustrating the disconnect between Mel and Ted: to fill space with as many axioms as possible to avoid dealing with grief and guilt does not render any empathy for what Mel is going through. Rather, it makes her a cardboard character the audience cares nothing for, as there is no flesh and blood to her plight. Language here is, for the most part, used as a barrier between the audience and characters, not a bridge. It renders scenes static, not active. It is no surprise when Ted leaves her.
Ted, who travels for his job, has affairs and drinks in bars, meeting random people. When he is not speaking in adages, he is speaking in repetitive phrases, like the wife-swapping scene with a regular, beer-drinking Guy (Raymond McAnally, spot on) in a sports bar, as well as with the transvestite flight attendant and GI Joe (both played in high style by Matthew Montelongo). When Ted meets Lenora (Rebecca Wisocky), a good-time gal in a different bar, the scene sparks and crackles with life: Lenora is talkative, funny, uninhibited, sexy, fragile, happy, and bitter, seemingly all at once. Wisocky brings a fully fleshed out character to the play, and is not handicapped by language. She is real, which is why Ted is so quickly hooked.
Monique Vukovic, as Ted and Mel’s inquisitive daughter Lanie brings a haunting quality during her sung lines to the audience, and is pitch-perfect as a child who always wants to know why. Judith Greentree’s Tooth Fairy adds levity, as well as an outfit that suggests vintage, turquoise, time-traveling sequins.
There are two wonderful scenes that come towards the end of the play. Both dispense with repetitive language, aphorisms, and consequently, they are the strongest ones in God’s Ear. In the first, Ted comes back to Mel, and is greeted by his daughter. By this time, Ted’s hair has gone gray, which Lanie immediately notices, and demands to see. He kneels, showing her the top of his head, and she touches his hair, telling him she likes it a lot. Ted, feeling her acceptance and forgiveness, cries as he holds her. The second is where Mel explains what happened the day her son drowned, and how she feels responsible. But because there is no buildup for these emotional payoffs, the scenes do not have the wallop that they should.
For all its deliberately disjointed structure and sprinkling of wacky characters, there is something troubling about the depiction of Mel and Ted. Boiled down to their essences, they are clichés: Mel deals with her grief by talking non-stop, becoming frigid, and driving her husband away (and once she discovers the affairs, becomes shrewish); and Ted reacts by remaining contained and unexpressive until he finally leaves and has affairs. And as there was no reconciliation, nor communication between the two, why would Ted come back to Mel“ What really changed between them? They seem physically together at the end, but not emotionally.
God’s Ear is a Yiddish term: “From your mouth to God’s Ear.” It is said to be an expression of hope; that what is seen and heard will be acted upon by God. I wanted to feel that at the end; I wanted to feel there was some sort of hope for these two people, as husband and wife. But the last conversation between Ted and Mel remained disconnected, with no common ground, so all I had at the end was questions, and no intimation of hope
