Some Laughs, But No There There

Here’s a play with a nagging question. Is this a woman in crisis over the death of her therapist, or do we have a woman in crisis because she is a neurasthenic, indulged, restless, limited, selfish and spoiled middle-aged wife of a doctor suspended in an elegant apartment on Riverside Drive (it could be pointed out here that the view from her living room window of the George Washington Bridge places her somewhere north of the drive, but that’s piffling. Careless, but piffling). 

Now a number of critics have been amused by Charles Busch’s comedy; It garnered theater nominations in 2000, earned none of them, and ran for a couple of years on Broadway, probably because of Linda Lavin (followed by Valerie Harper and finally Rhea Perlman). But this production at TheatreWorks,  usually a fine place for plays in New Milford, failed to make characters out of these one-note people. And the effort comes off as tiresome and, sometimes, vulgar.

The New York city apartment is in lilac and gray with Swedish-style furnishings and a tacky clock with knives, forks and spoons pointing to the hours of the day. Unlikely. These are not jokey people. We have a retired  M.D., Ira Traub, an allergist (Mitchell Prywes), who treats needy clinic patients with stuffy noses; and his wife Marjorie (M.J. Hartell), who seeks meaning in life by poring over recondite literature and taking in events at BAM and the 92nd Street Y, all of which make her feel intellectually wanting.

Then we have Marjorie’s mother Freida (Jody Bayer), who lives down the hall, a stereotype of an aging Jewish mother, hard on her child and burdened by numerous alimentary distresses.

So far, stock characters. Then we are introduced to Lee (Rosemary Howard), a glib, name-dropping redhead who observed, she claims, first-hand, the massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, chatted with Henry Kissinger at lunch, traveled with Kerouac and Warhol and gave Spielberg the idea of ET.

Marjorie is awakened and disturbed by Lee, and so is Marjorie’s mate, and this threesome enter into a kind of folie à trois. Then, with nowhere else to go, Busch drops everything (more of an escape than a finish) and we get to go home.

Leaving the theater, I heard a woman tell a friend, that’s how New Yorkers are. 

“The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” runs at TheatreWorks in New Milford through May 22. For tickets and information, go to theatreworks.us or telephone 860-350-6863.