If I hadn’t seen Detroit in London, at the National, as
directed by Austin Pendleton, I
would have dismissed Lisa D’Amour’s
play, as currently at Playwrights Horizons, under the direction of Anne Kaufman. And it’s not that Ms. Kaufman distorts the play or
presents it inaccurately. Nor, I hasten to add, is it that Detroit is
a great play. But—
—well,
a brief summary first; taking place in a suburban neighborhood, it tells the
story of two married couples who are new neighbors; strait-laced and sort-of
conventional Mary & Ben (Amy Ryan
and David Schwimmer) and former
addicts and somewhat more Out There Sharon & Kenny (Sarah
Sokolovic and Darren Pettie). As the play progresses, the influence of the
iconoclasts upon the conformists becomes more pervasive and more volatile.
This
gives a director an opportunity to be dangerous. And certainly the play has the
tells of danger; a shade umbrella that suddenly closes on someone’s head; a
sliding glass door that needs to be jiggled to slide fully over its track; a
corroded board in a porch structure that can collapse under and gouge a foot.
And in London, all these things were dangerous,
and so brilliantly executed that the audience not only gasped at the shock
(they do that a little in NY too), but recoiled at the damage; the head seeming
really hurt; the bleeding foot
seeming really injured). And the
casting was dangerous too. From the outset the two sets of couples were oil and
water, who could at best only try to
find healthy common ground.
I
sensed that Detroit at Playwrights was
in what I deemed trouble right from the start; for one thing, the couples
seemed potentially compatible. I understood Ms. Kaufman’s rationale—why
not dramatize an encroaching danger;
why not avoid giving away the game in the first reel, as it were? But then
there was this: I didn’t believe it when the umbrella collapsed. I didn’t
believe in the injury, I saw how the stunt was triggered (admittedly I knew it
was coming) and though the dialogue was telling me there might be a storm a-brewin’, I just wasn’t
along for the ride. Not, anyway, in a visceral sense. I never saw, nor felt, a
raw nerve.
I
hasten to add, this play is not some renegade, cinema verité pretender about
fringe society; in many ways, it’s a dark domestic comedy with a mild tincture
of absurdity. But it is, also, a play about getting closer and closer to the raw nerve, and if the little dangers at the start
are palpable, that’s what sets up the permission to pull out all the stops
later. That’s what creates the kind of dramatic tension between play and
audience that keeps you leaning forward.
I
hasten to add: Ms. Kaufman’s rendering, is, no mistake, cleanly delivered and
smoothly professional; it’s to no one’s discredit. The problem is…it never could
have been. Pendleton’s production courted artistic disaster from first minute
to last, because at every turn it got nearer an apocalypse. It could have
failed spectacularly. That it avoided flying out of control was a mark of how
undetectably controlled it was. But Ms. Kaufman’s production never causes you
to worry. In her able hands, with her able cast, the play is coherent,
respectably engaging, amusing…and edgeless…and safe…
Go to David Spencer's Profile
Return to Home Page