Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

“In The Daylight” by Tony Glazer, at the McGinn/Cazale Theater, should have been played as a high-camp, whodunit farce, outlandish black comedy a la Joe Orton. The fact that this did not occur to the playwright, who presents this gimmicky play with dead seriousness, makes “In The Daylight” a tragedy, though not in the classical sense.

After fleeing Ridgewood, New Jersey six years previously to settle in LA, the middle-aged prodigal son Martin (Joseph Urla) has been lured home on the anniversary of his father’s death, in order to scatter his ashes. His sister Jessica (Sharon Maguire) and mother Elizabeth (Concetta Tomei) did the luring, and after all, Martin is a big, fat success, writing a book called True Blue (he says Oprah loved it, by the way) which, though a work of fiction, implicated his mother in his father’s untimely demise. Martin arrives in the midst of an enormous and obviously symbolic storm, Hurricane Patricia, and amongst the early barbs thrown at Jessica, explains he would die without his Blackberry, which, he discovers soon after this statement, he has left on the plane. Enter a mysterious fan, one Charlotte (Ashley Austin Morris), with an even more mystifying accent, and lo and behold, she also has Martin’s Blackberry. She must stay the night because of the storm outside. But, is Charlotte what she seems“ And who, incomprehensibly, will leave the outside door open so Charlotte can listen to all of the family secrets being spilled? Will other unfathomable plot twists resemble any given daytime soap opera? If the answer is yes (and I believe it is) then humor is needed and needed desperately, but for the most part, it has been left out of this play.

One cannot blame the actors, who were giving it their all. The phantom father, played by Jay Patterson, is a silent but scotch-drinking ghost who flits in and around the speaking characters (because his mentioned presence is not enough?), but as a plot device, adds nothing. Joseph Urla does the insufferable artist who loathes his own success rather well, and Sharon Maguire’s coolness as Jessica leads naturally to her steel in Act II. Ashley Austin Morris’s Charlotte is the scene-stealer, channeling both the ditziness and the ruthlessness of Jennifer Tilly; she supplies some much-needed levity. The magnificent Concetta Tomei is easily the strongest of the bunch, but the decision to put her in a handsome robe, nightgown and then, inexplicably, shiny beige patent leather shoes, an ensemble no haughty woman in her right mind would be caught dead in, baffles. Could no one find Ms. Tomei ballet slippers with traction on the bottom, to assure she would not tumble down the stairs?

Which brings me to the set. A skewed, white, Surrealistic interior of a house, it was inappropriate to the action of the play, and certainly did not help out the actors. The first scene between Jessica and Martin was a case of a realistic acting style meeting a sterile set. This just made both Maguire and Urla look uncomfortable, possibly because all they had to lean on were stairs. Appearances can be deceiving, and a run-of-the-mill- looking house would lend credence to the notion that evil is present in the every day, in the ordinary, in the mundane. Combining evil, outrageousness, and humor is something not easily done. Joe Orton had it in spades.