Pied À Terre

Tweet

John S. Anastasi’s Pied À Terre is one of those small cast dramas with a lot of secrets to unload. Unfortunately, director Mitch Poulos has staged the play at so slow a pace that it seems to take twice as long as it should. It also has a tricky structure, going back and forth between the present and the past, so that the revelations are greatly delayed. One of the biggest secrets is revealed just before the unnecessary intermission which only serves to make the play longer.

Julia Davis, a successful Connecticut television commentator, discovers a Greenwich Village apartment owned by her husband Jack, a Connecticut lawyer, that she never knew existed. There she meets Katie, a 19-year-old former prostitute, who claims to have lived in the apartment for the previous six months seeing her husband every other weekend since having met him at a supermarket. Katie is actually awaiting Jack at the moment but Julia knows he won’t be coming.

Julia pretends to be Jack’s sister in order to draw Katie out. Katie is expecting a marriage proposal that very weekend. However, some things don’t ring true: Katie claims Jack has never kissed her and that they have never been intimate. She also knows about Jack’s daughter Sarah who died two years ago of cystic fibrosis which is apparently when his marriage went downhill. And to make matters worse, both Jack and his wife are carriers which gave them a 25% chance of passing it on to their offspring so that they blame Sarah’s death on each other. However, Julia claims that there is another daughter Laura that Katie has never heard of nor has Jack ever mentioned her.

Beginning in the present, the play covers nine scenes, interrupting each of Julia and Katie’s conversations with flashbacks to when Katie met Jack: six months ago, four months ago and two weeks ago. The final scene also merges Jack and Julia’s visit to the apartment a year ago when it was still owned by his company with Julia’s current visit.  Jack’s reason for showing her the apartment was to suggest they move there to save their marriage with a change of scenery. There are many more twists and turns before the final revelations and the convoluted structure partly accounts for how long it takes to get there.

While the story is intriguing, the soap opera-ish plot and acting doesn’t much help. The actors are hampered by how little we are actually told as the play is mostly a waiting game. As Julia, Michelle Serje (replacing the previous Jacqueline Phoenix pictured in the production photos) is mostly as an interlocutor trying to find out as much as she can from Katie. Macy McGrail is believable as the 19-year-old though the play’s language for her is not entirely credible for her age group. This may be accounted for by the fact that Jack has been educating her in the last six months of their relationship. Jordan Allen Bell as Jack has the thinnest role awkwardly dealing attempting not be intimate with the randy Katie while trying to keep her interested in him. Several explanations for this are given in the course of the play until the final revelation.

Joel Connelly and Butch Regala are credited with scenic modifications of Jay Stone’s Perfect Crime set (the play still running at The Theater Center) for the attractive and cozy living room setting with fireplace, bookcases, desk and piano. The uncredited costumes are appropriate with Katie favoring pink and fuchsia possibly to suggest how young she really is. Vanessa Estrada’s intriguing props include an elaborate model of a musical carousel resembling the one in Central Park.

John S. Anastasi’s Pied À Terre is an interesting attempt at both a thriller and a cat and mouse game. However, director Mitch Poulos’s leisurely staging lessens the tension inherent in the storyline. Michelle Serje, Macy McGrail and Jordan Allen Bell work hard to keep the rather contrived story bubbling along.

Pied À Terre (through July 26, 2026)

22Q Entertainment

Anne L. Bernstein Theater at the Theater Center, 210 W. 50^th Street, 4^th Floor, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.piedaterreplay.com

Running time: two hours including one intermission