Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Thomas Bradshaw’s sixty-five minute sketch of a play, “The Bereaved,” presented by Partial Comfort Productions, certainly isn’t boring. It could be re-titled as “White, Middle-Class People Behaving Badly.” Very badly.

Michael, a middle-aged adjunct professor, sits at the kitchen table, working on the same book he has been working on for seven years, Billy Joel playing in the background. His wife Carol, a lawyer, comes in from work and they argue briefly about taking out the garbage. More importantly, their fifteen-year old son Teddy (Vincent Madero) has been masturbating in class, and needs a talking to. Later on, Michael is seen snorting coke and drinking whiskey at the same kitchen table, when Carol, in celebration of winning her case, decides to join him. Eric Clapton plays in the background. Then she has a heart attack. Then, realizing she has no life insurance and money will be a problem after she’s gone, she asks Michael to marry her best friend Katy (KK Moggie) because Katy has a good job as a psychologist and can look after Michael and Teddy. Katy also has rape fantasies and wants to be hit by a brick and then strangled and balled by her black attacker. Michael’s fantasy is much more mundane: he only wants to lick Katy’s ass and then hump her. Meanwhile, Teddy is being led astray by Melissa (Jenny Seastone Stern) a coke-snorting, promiscuous teen who scores her drugs in Harlem from Jamal, the black dealer (Brian D. Coats). UB40 plays in the background.

Eventually, fantasies are enacted, there’s a death, a wedding, a pregnancy, and a gun will go off.
Confused“ You won’t be. All threads, no matter how tenuous, ultimately intersect. Entertained? You will be. These people are stereotypes to laugh at. Enlightened? No. There’s no light shed, and nothing new being said here. This is high farce, Bradshaw-style. What is said and done is not extreme enough to be shocking, or disturbing. The cast is game, and inhabit their characters well, often in various states of undress.

The last full-length play of Bradshaw’s, “Dawn,” performed at The Flea, had a lot of merit and a lot to say, despite a misconceived ending. He is certainly not without talent. But “The Bereaved” feels like an exercise tossed off in haste, and Bradshaw seems disdainful of the characters he has created. He can do better.