| . | 01/12/2010
Safe Home
By: Eugene Paul
Photo by: Alex Koch Featuring Eric Miller
In an arresting play that is still finding its footing, new playwright Sean Cullen brings his known actor’s skills to a bludgeon of memories in order to spin the interwoven story threads of the Hollytree family, father Jim, fighting his slipping hold on his family, his job, indeed, his life, as he literally cannot grasp anything, let alone with his bloody, bandaged hands. Ada, his wife, mother of his three sons, still Lace Curtain Irish despite their working class existence, drifts away from direct answers, hugs her remaining strength into herself, which doesn’t leave the three brothers much to hang on to; a “family” has to be more than a word. Young hearts hungering for love and understanding fill up with anger and bitterness when they daily meet orders, rejection, disillusion from worried, distraught parents. With an arsenal of vivid rememberings, sensitively layered performances and artful pacing, playwright Cullen and his director, Chris Henry, have mounted a fresh take on familiar territory. They have lots of good company: O’Neill, Miller, Odets, all diggers below ethnic veneers.
The boys, Jim Jr., Pat and John, can’t grasp the Korean War as the new war reality for home town Buffalo in early 1950’s. They were all too young for WWII. Young Jim, the eldest, bounced out of school for acting up, finds a job hauling radiators much to his father’s dismay. After a dust up between them, Jimmy enlists in the marines. Much more anger, guilt, recrimination. And later, when a coffin is delivered to the house the burning question for young Pat is: does that box contain his brother’s actual remains, while our question among many is: how is it the Irish accept death so readily?
Through eight scenes, each with its own weight, its own relationships, its own links to the other family problems and secrets, playwright Cullen writes in densely realistic terms yet with an artistic economy implying more than the words themselves. At the outset of the play, when Jim comes in to a broiling oven of a house, shut up tight in high summer, his offstage greeting from his wife is “Jim, Jim, is that you?” Instantly we know that this absurdly arch query comes from a disturbed, pretentious woman, and when she appears, wrapped in a blanket, we are right in the author’s hands. Who is this borderline lunatic? And why? And how? And Jim, wild eyed, fierce, bloody, bandaged hands? What is happening? Has happened? Will happen? This is gifted playwriting. The author has chosen to string his scenes in non-linear fashion: August 1952 is followed by March 1952, then March 1953, September 1951 and so on, in a design we cannot follow, clearly more authorial striving, working to make an audience work. The dislocations are not entirely successful, in part because playwright Cullen loses his focus on who and what is the core of the play. The reason for his ordering of scenes never becomes clear. Is the irony of the last scene to underscore the awful futility of the scene before? We are left with questions that are meant to hurt. Which may be reason enough.
Director Henry has hewed to the shape author Cullen has imposed yet she works miracles in relationships among the family, thanks to a gifted cast. Cynthia Mace as the mother is fascinating, moving, even as you remain leery of her. Mace is simply wonderful. Michael Cullen as the heavily beset father is superb, start to finish. The fact that these two actors are a generation older than one might expect the parents to be of such young lads lends another layer of richness to the play. Eric Miller, brilliant as young Jimmy, makes him totally available to us. Erik Saxvik as his stormy younger brother Pat finds just the right notes and Ian Hyland as youngest brother John plays a beautifully contrasting simplicity. Katy Wright Mead, as Claire, Jimmy’s secret love needs to learn how to give her performance to the back row. It’s quite nice. And her hair is glorious.
Women’s Interart Theater. 500 West 52nd Street. Tickets: $18. Smarttix.com or 212-868-4444. Thu, Fri, Sat 8 pm. Sun 5 pm, Mon 7 pm.
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