From
Culture Vulture - 10/07/07
THE QUALITY OF LIFE
by Karen Weinsten
Once again the Geffen’s baby sister has left big sis in the
dust. The main stage is featuring Wendy Wasserstein’s Third – intended to be a
blockbuster but a grave disappointment -- while little sib around the corner is
entertaining and provoking with The Quality of Life, commissioned by the Geffen
itself. Quality has humor and wit, while tackling several of life’s more
complicated subjects: love, grief, anger, loss and death. That is a tall order
and a difficult mix. Writer/director Jane Anderson does not get it right all the
time, but she often strikes a pleasing balance between gravitas and
entertainment.
Two couples are facing catastrophic loss. One is from the Midwest. Their college
age daughter has been brutally murdered. They are barely holding themselves
together individually or as a couple. The other two are living in a tent on
their burnt out, Berkeley Hills property (a wonderful set by Francois-Pierre
Couture dramtically using a huge photo of burnt out hills as a backdrop), the
husband is facing his imminent death from cancer; they are the kind of couple
usually described as ‘joined at the hip.’ The only thread binding the two
couples is a common grandmother shared by the two women who have not seen each
other in years.
Families can make strange bed fellows. The person you would pay little attention
to at a dinner party can become the person for whom you donate bone marrow or
even consider giving up a kidney.
As tenuous as their real connection is, the search for connection is sufficient
for Dinah (Jobeth Williams) to push her husband Bill (Scott Bakula) to venture
their first trip from their secure, Christian, Kansas home to the wilds of
Northern California. The Berkeley hills dwelling Jeannette (Laurie Metcalf) and
Neil (Dennis Boutsikaris) are as though from another planet. Each couple is on
its best behavior, cognizant of the others’ loss, burning from their own.
On one level Quality is about how differently Ms. Anderson projects that a
quintessential fundamentalist person from a red state will face monumental loss
versus how a stereotypic (if extreme) vegetarian, liberal, atheistic coast
dweller deals with it. Dinah and Bill have turned to church. Bill has looked to
his church for all his answers. He is an engineer who sees the world in black
and white, not knowing what to do with his anger but to keep it tightly bottled
up and one suspects it is the anger that protects him from being crushed by the
loss. Dinah, too, looks to her faith for the answers but she is prone to crying
fits and knowingly stays busy to keep herself distracted. She tries to converse
with her taciturn husband. Empathy only flows in one direction and the flow is
not strong. In their pain they are exquisitely polite and unavailable to one
another.
Neil and Jeannette could not be more different. He is a revered Sociology
professor at UC Berkeley. He has decided that his cancer has progressed to a
point that treatment no longer makes sense to him. His plan is to get as much as
he can from the limited life he will have, he stems his pain with pot but knows
there will come a time when it will no longer suffice. His plan is to deliver
his last lecture, they will have a party for all their friends, and the next
morning, in the arms of his beloved Jeannette, he will take a lethal dose. He is
apparently at peace with this plan; the one thing he can control is his exit.
Jeannette, a poet, presents herself as a free spirit barefoot in her ethnic
clothes, having created a home out of a richly decorated yurt with a makeshift
kitchen under the burnt out trees and expressing her adoration of Neil openly
and frequently. They have strung up lanterns between charred stumps and have the
twisted shapes of some of their burnt possessions hanging as décor. Jeannette
quotes Neil, “We are the ones who instill preciousness on things.” It is the
ultimate case of making lemonade if life deals you lemons. She adores Neil,
doting and draping upon him, outwardly endorsing his plan without hesitation,
covering her pain with wine.
As polite as all try to be, it is a mix that is destined to be volatile. Bill
bolts from the group at the mention of pot. He tries to “save” Neil despite
Neil’s polite disdain. When Bill steams off again, Neil says “A little dogma is
alright between consenting adults,” humor the fundamentalist Bill could never
accept. Dinah is more open. She desperately wants to make the connection with
her cousin and, without losing her faith, is able to accept much more of the
Berkeley philosophy. In her sweet way she is looking for answers, not looking
for conversions.
The intimacy that develops between the two women leads Jeannette to share her
own plan which is to lie down and die with her husband rather than face the
ravages of time and age without him. It is a bizarre plan which cannot be
explained away by a different life style and distresses all of the others. None
of the others can accept her decision, least of all Neil.
Anderson tells this tale with as much balance as she can muster, but her
philosophical sympathies, and the Westside audience’s politics are clearly more
comfortable with the Blue state couple. Neutrality is hard to muster, but
Jeannette’s decision appalls all while it serves to focus the drama. The
juxtaposition of Red State vs. Blue State is a simplistic way to view Quality.
In the end it is a story of how ill equipped most of us are to handle deep grief
and how there are no shortcuts through tragedy. What Anderson excels at is
serving this tragedy with clever dollops of wit rather than a hammer. What she
does not quite get is the world from the born-again Bill’s point of view.
Laurie Metcalf is kooky, but likeable as Jeannette, and JoBeth Williams hits the
right notes as the people pleaser Dinah who is finding her own voice. Dennis
Boutsikaris as Neil is convincing as the dry witted intellectual, if a bit
robust looking for someone with end stage cancer.
Viewed as a work in progress Quality of Life is an excellent start. Tightening
of the role of Bill would go a long way to creating a more real ring. However,
it is certainly more ready for prime time than Third and bristles with meaning
as well as entertainment.
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