Fathers and Sons

Richard
Hoehler’s two-man play, Fathers and Sons, splices together six different
scenes—from a disgraced Hispanic immigrant father to a mentally handicapped
nephew—to run the gamut of father/son frustration. In a way, it’s successful in
its issues-out-of-a-hat approach, since you definitely have your pick with
which to identify. Because the trappings of each scenario are so clichéd,
however, the play rarely conveys any real authority, and its insights often
ring hollow. Or was that just the play within the play?

See,
while Hoehler’s Fathers and Sons is what you’re watching, Fathers and Sons is
also the title of the play written by Hoehler’s stand-in character,
conveniently named Richard. And like the play you’re watching, it’s to be
performed with his protégé and self-described “resident hottie,” Edwin (Edwin
Matos Jr.). The whole action of Fathers and Sons takes place in the rehearsal
room where Richard and Edwin go over their
play, and as the actors practice this episodic tale, switching in and out
of all the different well-meaning, but conflict-ridden father/son relationships
that Richard has written, the pair’s own tensions rise as well.

This
structure opens up a floodgate of reflexivity. Every comment the characters
make in the play-within-a-play functions doubly as a comment made on the outer
play. The line between meta-commentary and actual flaw, though, becomes thin
early on. After the first scene rehearsal, street-smart Edwin complains that
Richard’s characters are unrealistically understanding, and suggests a new ending
where the dad character kicks the rebellious son out of the house like a dog.
“That’s what I see in my
neighborhood,” he says, unconvinced. But, equally unconvincing is the supposed
toughness of Edwin himself. His lazy gratitude to Richard for helping him
discover “this theater stuff” only goes so far to establish character, and
Matos plays him more like a goof than a true challenge to Richard’s
rose-colored point of view.

The
play structure does have at least one benefit: It allows the audience to like
Hoehler and Matos. The actors constantly come out of their one-dimensional
roles, and back to their base characters, which comparatively come off as much
more authentic. The structure also benefits Hoehler, since he’s able to
exposing his range of acting abilities, his writing and his own authentic
Richardness—an aging gay actor who’s dedicated to teaching drama to public
school students, and to the struggling optimism that comes with such a
thankless job. But even although Richard and Edwin accumulate an intense warmth
by the end of the play, their relationship is stunted dramatically by the
requirement on them to constantly interact "nonverbally" through
their scenes, leaving them barely more interesting than their generic roles.

At
the conflict’s height, Hoehler almost scoots Richard past the bland safety of
nice-kind-avuncular, and even toys with letting Richard break loose on his own
and call Edwin the n-word. But he does it practically in quotes, and Edwin
fails to be black, so it doesn’t pack much punch. For a play whose full
pretentious title is Fathers and Sons: A
Power Play, and also owns up to its Turgenev inspiration, very little
“power” is ever exchanged. In the end, Richard and Edwin never distinguish
themselves from the ciphers they take on, and so the play, and
play-within-the-play, suffer the same critique.