Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

A.R. Gurney’s latest work, A Light Lunch, currently running downtown at The Flea theater and directed by Jim Simpson, is a witty satire riddled with jokes aimed at the playwright himself and his profession. This makes for very fun theater for about the first 30 minutes. Unfortunately, jokes such as “Oh, this is the part where the exposition comes,” have a tendency grow old rather quickly. What begins as a clever idea is unnecessarily dragged out to the 75 minutes mark to create a full-length evening. The thin plot may be stretched nearly to breaking point, but at least it’s adequately peppered with laughs and adeptly acted by four members of The Bats, The Flea’s young resident company.

The show is based around a clever little premise in which a lawyer from Texas invites a literary agent to “a light lunch” to discuss optioning a play. However, it happens to be an A.R. Gurney play they are discussing, thus providing multiple opportunities for jokes at the expense of the playwright. Furthermore, throughout the lunch the agent must also periodically explain playwriting and the theater business to the lawyer, with the help of the eager waitress, who is of course an out of work actor. What should be a fairly standard business meeting quickly goes awry when the lawyer reveals rather unusual circumstances: her client would like to remain anonymous and own the sole rights to the play for eternity despite the fact that is not, and may never be, finished. The agent attempts to walk away when a rather sizable amount of money is suggested. The play happens to be about George W. Bush and the agent at first assumes the client is a Bush-hater out to further humiliate the former president. The client’s motives turn out to be somewhat different, but the surprising part is Gurney’s view of Bush. The agent explains Gurney’s feeling of kinship with the man through similar upbringings. Gurney in fact comes to see Bush as a fallen man who has been beaten enough that he deserves America’s pity rather than its hatred. With the waitress’ aid, the agent proceeds to act out the play for the lawyer. The waitress’ boyfriend, who is a drama-theory professor at The New School, arrives, deus ex machina style, to help them figure out the perfect tragic ending to the tale of George W. Bush. The characters then make a few comments about how endings of plays are the hardest part to write, before the real play ends with its own surprisingly underwhelming ending.

As the boyfriend/teacher character comments in the play, Gurney may perhaps be one of the most under-rated playwrights in the United States. Sadly, A Light Lunch only gives brief shimmering glimpses of the talent displayed in his earlier works. Over his fifty plus years as a writer he has amassed an impressive amount of work, including his plays Scenes from American Life, The Dining Room, Love Letters, and Mrs. Farnsworth. In his case, I expect better of an accomplished playwright than resorting to making jokes about obvious exposition and timely entrances in order to avoid putting in the effort to make them look natural. The same goes for trite plot turns and disappointing endings.