We Do the Same Thing Every Week

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As the audience members file into their seats, they take in lucas a degirolamo’s simple but effective set: wall-to-wall strikingly red carpet, vividly blue back walls into which are cut two asymmetrical doors and other smaller openings, two lamps, a centrally placed large window (which will cleverly roll through various panels as the scenes change), an uncomplicated blue couch, a plain round table covered in a blue table cloth. Although we eventually learn there are two children and two adults living in this home, there are only three blue folding chairs, and only two of them are ever occupied; from the moment the house opens, seated in them are Dick (playwright Robert Leverett) and Jane (Jessica Nesi), languidly playing cards. The time is the 1950s, although it could be any time. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice fades out as the play begins.

Dick and Jane, like their famous children’s books primer namesakes, share repetitive, meaningless exchanges. It seems their mundane card game and rainy-day Sunday blahs might continue indefinitely, until they are interrupted by the appearance of a “six-foot-tall, bipedal” Cat (in a hat)(Casey Worthington), whose sole intent is to appease Dick and Jane’s boredom. Not too soon after, Cat introduces Thing A (Kate Budney) and Thing B (Justin Choi) to the mix, and eventually Dick and Jane’s only pet Fish (Tora Nogami Alexander) joins the ensuing hijinks.

Scenes progress, and it becomes clear that nothing which happens in Dick and Jane’s house makes a whole lot of sense, and that’s absolutely the point of Leverett’s witty, clever, and smart play. Giving a firm nod to the absurdist playwriting genre first popularized in the mid-1950s, We Do the Same Thing Every Week imparts the mindless, repetitive, and boring existence of humankind, which no amount of parlor games, huge vacuums (household or existential), duets, tap-dancing Things, or anthropomorphized cats and fish can overturn.

Leverett and Nesi are delightful as Dick and Jane, their dead-pan deliveries of Leverett’s subtle, intelligently funny banter are a joy to watch, as are Worthington’s antics as Cat. Things A/B are well-played by Budney and Choi, who are also commended for their excellent deployment of Olivia Vaughn Hern’s puppetry. Alexander as Fish finds humor in the smallest corners of her lines and actions.

All the actors’ facial expressions fully complement their line delivery, a clear result of their acting talents as well as Liza Couser’s deft direction, which maximizes on the actors’ listening and focus, as well as inventive staging and the arc of the play itself. Couser and Budney also contribute some adorable choreography to accompany the music, lyrics, and arrangements by Robert and Freeman Leverett, Couser and music director Kristin McGuire.

Except for the often-over-lengthy cataclysmic occurrences of vacuum decay, the entire production is tight and well-shaped by both the writing and direction. My theater companion stated that this play reminded him of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, and the comparison resonates.

The only thing boring and unimaginative about the play We Do the Same Thing Every Week is its title; otherwise, it is funny, intelligent, engaging, thought-provoking, and worth a look-see, perhaps more than once (extension, anyone?).

We Do the Same Thing Every Week (through May 17, 2025)

Attractive Nuisance

Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres, 502 W 53rd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets visit http://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/attractive-nuisance/WDTSTEW

Running time: 70 minutes without an intermission