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Open: 04/17/2010- Close: 05/29/2010
Parents' Evening Reviewed for TheaterOnline.com By: Jason Clark
 Imagine if Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage had only one pair of yuppie squabblers who chose to bicker at each other rather than toward another couple for 90 minutes and you'd pretty much approximate Bathsheba Doran's dramedy Parents' Evening, a repetitive play short on insight as to why children bring out the worst in parental figures. Despite a simple, stylish production (directed by Jim Simpson) at the Flea, and a pair of pros (Julianne Nicholson and James Waterston), one simply cannot get inside the heads of these characters, possibly because they're so filled with speeches and rage there isn't room for much else.
 Unfolding in two short acts, we witness the before and after of couple Judy (Nicholson) and Michael (Waterston)-unimaginatively conceived as a lawyer and novelist respectively as a nerve-wracking parent-teacher conference looms large. Turns out their 10-year old daughter Jessica (never seen) has been distributing “filthy books” amongst classmates and has already begun tempting her parents' patience. When the play begins, Michael has just been defeated in a game of Clue by his precocious daughter, which leads to his badgering of Judy, toiling away at legal documents and growing increasingly harried with Michael's insecurities. Tension mounts pre-meeting, and eventually follows them home, where they hash out their abilities as parents and question the validity of their marriage, particularly when the school advises them to visit with a social worker, and Michael's routine discipline of their daughter comes into focus, often leaving Judy to keep things civil despite her overextended schedule. It's unclear as to what extent playwright Doran wants us to identify with Michael and Judy, and that is a big reason why Parents' Evening fails to engage. Employing a cyclical structure in which the couple snipes about child-raising, then marriage, then soberly back to why they genuinely care for each other, the play seems stuck in the same loop its characters are, and despite some flavorful passages (a good one involving why the youngster should read D.H. Lawrence if she is to read dirty books), it never really catches fire. Nicholson and Waterston are mighty valiant here, and sometimes even affecting, particularly in a wordless final scene that, more succinctly than any of the blather we've heard up to that point, truly nails the tricky, codependent nature of their relationship. The rest of the time it's what Judy aptly describes in the play as one of her husband's downfalls: “talk, talk, talk, talk-all the time”. Venue: Flea Theater Mainstage : 41 White Street |
