Three Changes
Through Oct. 3 at Playwright’s Horizons, 416 West 42nd St. (betw. 9th and 10th Aves.); 212-564-1235, $65.
Oh, what a tangled mess Nicky Silver weaves when he’s a draft short of an actual play. At least, that’s the impression being given at Playwrights Horizons, which is currently producing the world premiere of Silver’s latest play, Three Changes. With a cast split between Hollywood (Dylan McDermott and Maura Tierney) and stage stalwarts (Aya Cash, Scott Cohen and Brian J. Smith) Three Changes features more than its share of abrupt transitions, head-scratching plot twists and annoying theatrical tics.
A prosperous Upper West Side couple, Laurel (Tierney) and Nate (McDermott) start the evening off by tediously breaking the fourth wall and explaining how Nate’s estranged brother Hal (Cohen) ended up at their apartment. After decades without any communication, Hal has suddenly appeared on their doorstep after hitting rock bottom and finding God. What follows is remarkably similar to the 1976 camp horror classic Burnt Offerings, as Hal’s life becomes better and better—including the addition of amoral hustler Gordon (Smith) on Laurel and Nate’s couch—and Nate’s life falls apart.
Silver peppers Three Changes with several more moments when the actors step downstage and address the audience directly, but he saves the most puzzling of these monologues for poor Aya Cash, playing Nate’s mistress Steffi. Not only does she barely get anything to do for most of the show, but Steffi is apparently privy (from the wings of the stage) to a scene between Laurel and Hal in Laurel’s apartment. In fact, Steffi is such a confusing character that one tries to forget her in a desperate attempt to cling onto a semblance of logic. Cash does her best, even wringing some laughs out of her dumb blonde character, but she’s ultimately defeated by Silver’s hodgepodge of a script.
In fact, the only actor on stage required to actually give a nuanced performance is Maura Tierney as the fragile Laurel, and she can’t quite deliver. Relying too much on a pert, peppy method of delivery, Tierney never quite connects with the emotional woman Silver has written, murmuring a monologue about miscarrying several children with the rueful wistfulness of a host who has forgotten she was expecting guests.
McDermott, however, acquits himself nicely as the cardboard Nate, first menacing and then menaced, while Cohen does what he can with the woefully underwritten Hal. But Brian J. Smith, as Hal’s 19-year-old lover Gordon, creates a smirking, wholly evil character out of very little. Speaking in a nasal voice that makes him sound like a vicious Don Knotts, Smith doesn’t give a good performance so much as a diverting one. Perpetually sucking on a lollipop, Smith turns Gordon into something like Hal’s familiar, a creature from Hell whose sole purpose is to aid his master in whatever way possible.
As to what his master’s purpose may be, I regret to say that I’m not altogether sure. A pair of innocuous, barely noticeable eyeglasses may hold a clue, but I suspect that the plot would have been tightened and polished in the next draft. Too bad no one insisted that Silver write one.
Through Oct. 3 at Playwright’s Horizons, 416 West 42nd St. (betw. 9th and 10th Aves.); 212-564-1235, $65.
Oh, what a tangled mess Nicky Silver weaves when he’s a draft short of an actual play. At least, that’s the impression being given at Playwrights Horizons, which is currently producing the world premiere of Silver’s latest play, Three Changes. With a cast split between Hollywood (Dylan McDermott and Maura Tierney) and stage stalwarts (Aya Cash, Scott Cohen and Brian J. Smith) Three Changes features more than its share of abrupt transitions, head-scratching plot twists and annoying theatrical tics.
A prosperous Upper West Side couple, Laurel (Tierney) and Nate (McDermott) start the evening off by tediously breaking the fourth wall and explaining how Nate’s estranged brother Hal (Cohen) ended up at their apartment. After decades without any communication, Hal has suddenly appeared on their doorstep after hitting rock bottom and finding God. What follows is remarkably similar to the 1976 camp horror classic Burnt Offerings, as Hal’s life becomes better and better—including the addition of amoral hustler Gordon (Smith) on Laurel and Nate’s couch—and Nate’s life falls apart.
Silver peppers Three Changes with several more moments when the actors step downstage and address the audience directly, but he saves the most puzzling of these monologues for poor Aya Cash, playing Nate’s mistress Steffi. Not only does she barely get anything to do for most of the show, but Steffi is apparently privy (from the wings of the stage) to a scene between Laurel and Hal in Laurel’s apartment. In fact, Steffi is such a confusing character that one tries to forget her in a desperate attempt to cling onto a semblance of logic. Cash does her best, even wringing some laughs out of her dumb blonde character, but she’s ultimately defeated by Silver’s hodgepodge of a script.
In fact, the only actor on stage required to actually give a nuanced performance is Maura Tierney as the fragile Laurel, and she can’t quite deliver. Relying too much on a pert, peppy method of delivery, Tierney never quite connects with the emotional woman Silver has written, murmuring a monologue about miscarrying several children with the rueful wistfulness of a host who has forgotten she was expecting guests.
McDermott, however, acquits himself nicely as the cardboard Nate, first menacing and then menaced, while Cohen does what he can with the woefully underwritten Hal. But Brian J. Smith, as Hal’s 19-year-old lover Gordon, creates a smirking, wholly evil character out of very little. Speaking in a nasal voice that makes him sound like a vicious Don Knotts, Smith doesn’t give a good performance so much as a diverting one. Perpetually sucking on a lollipop, Smith turns Gordon into something like Hal’s familiar, a creature from Hell whose sole purpose is to aid his master in whatever way possible.
As to what his master’s purpose may be, I regret to say that I’m not altogether sure. A pair of innocuous, barely noticeable eyeglasses may hold a clue, but I suspect that the plot would have been tightened and polished in the next draft. Too bad no one insisted that Silver write one.
