From LA Weekly.com - 10/15/07

THE QUALITY OF LIFE
by Steven Leigh Morris

The Quality of Life would lose absolutely nothing if it transferred directly to TV. This is not a compliment, but a comment on Jane Anderson’s cinematic yet slightly stilted direction of her own play (commissioned by this theater) that tosses theatricality into the charred remains of the Northern California forest in which most of the drama unfolds. This clash of couples feels like a revisit to Anderson’s far more successful The Baby Dance, but with different issues. That play revealed the social disparity and the gulfs of incomprehension when a wealthy urban couple visits a poverty-stricken family in order to purchase the latter’s baby, once it’s born. Here, Bill and Dinah (Scott Bakula and JoBeth Williams) travel from their Midwest abode to visit their cousins, Neil and Jeannette (Dennis Boutsikaris and Laurie Metcalf), now living in a tent after a forest fire vaporized their home. The visiting couple consists of an emotionally distant, goal-oriented scientist with a repulsive streak of evangelical zealotry, and his good-natured, inquisitive and all-but-abandoned wife. (The destiny of this marriage is no surprise.) Into the woods, they meet the professor and his wife — aging hippies surrounded by their mangled and meaningless “stuff” — the remains of a computer, twisted CDs, etc. The ensuing culture clash is both predictable and generic: The Midwest couple is grieving the murder of their child. The hippies are preparing for Neil’s imminent death from a ravenous cancer. Into this very schematic and melodramatic duality, Anderson tosses in an array of social issues, all given cursory speeches, some of which are met with applause. Neil smokes medical marijuana, for example, which Bill can’t endure. (He sits by himself in the car during Neil’s treatments. Bill is such a blowhard that the play’s point is proselytized rather than discussed.) Next we move on to the issue of euthanasia, and then to suicide. The play goes into contortions in order to push the audience’s emotional buttons — in so doing it grapples meaningfully with almost nothing. It’s more like a soap opera with “life and death” issues attached like Christmas tree ornaments, dangling in a netherworld between social satire and tragedy. Yet the characters aren’t broad enough for the former and not rich enough for the latter. The actors are terrific in a play that needs either more development, more reflection or more inspiration. GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Wstwd.; Tues.-Thurs., 8 p.m.; Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 3:30 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 & 7:30 p.m.; thru Nov. 18; (310) 208-5454.

© Copyright 2007 LA Weekly, LP

• Home • Up • Biographical • Theater • Media • Photos • Screencaps • Audio/Video • Resources • Downloads • Fan Fiction • Join In • Links • Site Map •