From Variety - 10/12/07
The Quality of Life
by Bob Verini
A Geffen Playhouse presentation of a play in two acts directed
and written by Jane Anderson.
Bill - Scott Bakula
Dinah - JoBeth Williams
Neil - Dennis Boutsikaris
Jeannette - Laurie Metcalf
The
impending retirement and shuffling-off this mortal coil of the enormous baby
boom generation was bound to inspire a rash of media treatments, and Jane
Anderson's peerlessly acted "The Quality of Life" will stand among the most
involving. Anderson never relaxes her grip in "Quality," incorporating enough
contempo issues to fuel a season of "Oprah" episodes.
Her antagonists, two estranged cousins and their husbands, neatly embody a
bifurcated America as they cope with past and pending losses. On the right,
Dinah (JoBeth Williams) and Bill (Scott Bakula) find their newly acquired
fundamentalist Christianity inadequate to deal with their grief over their only
daughter's recent violent death.
They abandon Ohio for Northern California when a forest fire destroys the home
of Jeannette (Laurie Metcalf) and Neil (Dennis Boutsikaris), on the left with
home-field advantage (Francois-Pierre Couture's stunning imagining of a
makeshift hippie yurt, crazily glittering amid mudslide desolation).
Earliest scenes are beautifully staged and played as four very different souls
endeavor to paper over differing world views in small talk, overlapped and
awkward, then heartfelt and easy. Gentle character comedy emerges in the
straitlaced Midwesterners' encounters with organic lunch and environmentally
friendly privy, the mood turning slowly and believably darker as the shattered
parents recognize a kinship with their Redwood country cousins.
One hesitates to say more about the revelations that follow, as the peeling away
of politesse is so much a part of Anderson's dramaturgy. However, so much is
laid by each couple on the other that Bill and Dinah's entire visit smacks of
authorial contrivance. Their return after a particularly bitter confrontation
feels prompted more by the desire for a second act than by the characters' will.
Evident, too, is Anderson's greater sympathy for the erstwhile hippies, who are
invariably given the stronger arguments and assigned quirks less often played
for snide laughs. One senses a desire to be -- dare we say it? --- fair and
balanced toward the couples, but the company hasn't reached that goal yet.
Audience involvement won't be much diminished by Anderson's full-to-bursting
thematic baggage, however, so carefully does this dream cast physicalize and
motivate their familiar roles to transcend stereotype. Williams' knitting
fingers and self-deprecating pleasantries barely mask a porcelain doll on the
edge of falling off the shelf. An agonized Bakula is just one big clenched fist,
in contrast with Metcalf's wired-up restlessness suggesting that even a
momentary hiatus might cause a breakdown.
And Boutsikaris, stiff with pain of a different kind, proves to be play's focal
point and moral center. The clearest voice of patient reason, Neil is given
Anderson's best sustained writing, an absorbing 11th-hour anthropology lecture
whose meaning the aud is permitted to work out for itself.
Transitions yield too many false endings, and awkward blackouts make the play
one of those "is it over yet?" evenings. But Jason H. Thompson's poetically
conceived lighting never fails to reinforce Anderson's principal theme: the
courage simply to hang in there, with dignity, as long as one reasonably can.
More than one option(Person) Jane Anderson
Director, Play as Source Material, Actor
(Person) Jane Anderson
Actor
(Person) Jane Anderson
Costume Designer, Wardrobe, Wardrobe Supervisor
(Person) Jane Anderson
Animator, Inbetweener
(Person) Jane Anderson
Casting AssistantSets, Francois-Pierre Couture; costumes, Christina Haatainen
Jones; lighting, Jason H. Thompson; production stage manager, Anna Belle
Gilbert. Opened, reviewed Oct. 10, 2007. Runs through Nov. 18. Running time: 1
HOUR, 55 MIN.
Copyright © 2007 Variety. All Rights
Reserved.
