Relatively Speaking

Yesterday I went into New York City to see a program of one-act plays, Relatively Speaking, by three estimable writers. Each was labeled a comedy, but they were different styles of comedy. All were directed by the actor John Turturro and all, as the title indicates, somehow related to family.

The first play, by Ethan Coen, called Talking Cure, is set in a psychiatric hospital. A patient, Danny Hoch, is being examined by a doctor, Jason Kravits. The doctor is full of bromides such as "I'm only trying to help you," but Hoch nimbly evades his questions and puts the doctor on the defensive. As one would expect of a Coen brother, it is black comedy that has a nice bite. It soon comes out that Hoch is a postal worker that snapped, and he begins discussing how much his parents argued during his childhood.

The play then morphs into a flashback showing those very same parents, Katherine Borowitz and Fred Melamed, sparring. This is classic Jewish humor, but I was thrown by the scene. It was jarring to have the shift from the psychiatric hospital to a Jewish couple's dining room, and I don't think the scene explained the patient's problems (he is in utero as the scene takes place). I did find the couple's bickering over the husband's use of Hitler as an extreme example amusing.

The middle play is George Is Dead, by Elaine May. This one-act veered wildly from farce to despair. Lisa Emery stars as a mild-mannered woman who has a late-night guest. She's Marlo Thomas, who abruptly announces that her husband has been killed in a skiing accident. It seems that Emery's mother was Thomas' long-time nanny, and that Emery has always resented her mother's apparently larger affection for her client than her own daughter. Thomas is a whirlwind of selfishness; she gives backhanded compliments and eventually worms an invitation to stay overnight. Emery even scrapes the salt off her Saltines.

As the play goes on Thomas is revealed to be pathological--she refuses to deal with making funeral arrangements, and prefers to watch old sitcoms on TV. Emery's husband (Grant Shaud) eventually arrives, and a sour scene between husband and wife, that seems out of place, unfolds. The play ends on a very dark note.

Finally, we get Woody Allen's Honeymoon Motel, which is why I attended, as I imagine most patrons did. (Ethan Coen joked in the New York Times that what people were thinking about during his play was "How long until Woody Allen's play?") Allen's work is old-fashioned boulevard farce, and I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote it 50 years ago, as it has a timeless quality, as well as having no shred of realism.

The setting is a tacky motel where two people, Steve Guttenberg and Ari Graynor, arrive, attired in wedding finery. They are goofy in love, and she is thrilled to see the round bed and heart-shaped jacuzzi. But then the first interloper appears. Shaud arrives while Graynor is in the bathroom. We soon are informed that though this looks like a typical honeymoon night, it is not. Guttenberg, despite being in a tuxedo, is not the groom. He's the groom's stepfather. (As my companion said, it all comes back to Soon-yi).

Eventually the motel room will fill with the entire family, including Guttenberg's spurned wife (Caroline Aaron), Graynor's parents (Mark Linn-Baker and Julie Kavner), an intoxicated rabbi (Richard Libertini), Guttenberg's shrink, and a pizza delivery guy. The laughs are frequent, the introspection is nonexistent. We know what we're in for when Guttenberg carries Graynor across the threshold and bangs her head on the doorjamb.

The play is heavily Jewish, with references to names like Mendel and Schlomo, and the rabbi referring to pogroms and Cossacks. There are plenty of laughs, such as when Kavner accuses Linn-Baker of having sex with a prostitute. "She wasn't a prostitute, she was your sister," he says. Aaron asks Guttenberg what happened to their marriage. He recites a litany of miseries, such as their constant fighting and their lack of a sex life. She responds, "But aside from that, we were very happy."

As director, Turturro is most successful with Allen's play, as it doesn't differ in tone. He stages the increasingly busy stage well, with everyone creating a tableau of zaniness. The other two plays don't quite hang together. Rewrites, rather than crisper direction, might have been in order.