KILLING TIME
|
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AMERICAN
|
CAROLINE'S KITCHEN
|
April 28, 2019
59E59
has kicked off its annual Brits
off-Broadway Festival with these three.
Killing
Time, by Zoe Mills, is a 90 minute comedy-drama
about a retired, female cellist (Bridget
Forsyth), living out the rest of her life her life at home, in the throes
of a fatal disease, and the young woman (Ms. Mills) who arrives from a hospital
home care service to help her out. The cellist is irascible, the young woman is
persistent, an inevitable mother-daughter dynamic begins to take shape (I
didn’t realize this as I watched, but the actresses are, in fact, mother and
daughter) and a not terribly surprising secret is revealed. Ms. Forsyth,
perhaps as an authentic function of
age, often doesn’t quite pick up her
lines fluidly enough to make them seem spontaneous and unmemorized;
Ms. Mills, an agreeable presence, doesn’t quite
let her own material speak for itself by just saying the lines, but rather
interpolates beats of angst and reaction; and they together exacerbate that the
play is unevenly structured and overwritten. It’s a sweet effort in its way,
but not one I can recommend, though all things considered, I wish I felt
differently.
Also
overlong, but mostly worth indulging, is Instructions for Servicemen in Britain, which is less a play than an extended
framework for sketch comedy. From the boilerplate: “It’s
1942, and a horde of Yankee servicemen have just arrived in England where the
locals speak a strange dialect, boil all their food, and talk endlessly about
the weather. The Americans see the Brits as a strange race.” And,
one may add, vice versa.
Co-written by its director, John Walton, and
performers—Dan March, James Millard, and Matt Sheahan—the
show makes us the new troops, and puts us under the often fantastically
misguided (yet subversively well observed) tutelage of a bungling, strutting
American Colonel (Millard); his second, a more grounded Colonel (March); and a
decidedly twee British Major (Shehan). There are
smart bits about cultural differences between language, food and sports (among
other topics) and much shameless, competing jingoism on both sides. Plus a modicum of solicited audience complicity if not
precisely participation. The comedy is sometimes a bit pushed, certain
recurring bits are extended past their optimum life, and, as I say, getting out
earlier wouldn’t hurt. But it’s all done with such giddy good nature that it’s
easy to forgive the lapses and play along in kind.
Finally, on the main stage, there’s Caroline’s Kitchen by Torben Betts (for those into developmental
history, it’s a 2019 reworking of a 2017 play called Monogamy). It’s the kind of dark, domestic comedy that’s
particularly British in sensibility, and seems very influenced by the work of
Alan Ayckbourn. The premise? Caroline (Caroline Langrische) is the star of a cooking show that records
in her home kitchen. Caroline is very Catholic, very organized, very together, and
about to move, recording the last episode of the season in this house before
showing it to prospective buyers. But when the cameras are off, a slow
apocalypse begins. Her snarky assistant Amanda (Jasmyn Banks), burdened
with caring for a dying mother, is making moves on handyman Graeme (James
Sutton) who has interests elsewhere. Caroline’s 20-year old son Leo (Tom
England) returns from school with a plan to announce and a secret to impart
to his parents, the other being hot-tempered golfer Mike (Aden Gillet);
and there’s an unexpected visit from the handyman’s unstable wife Sally (Elizabeth
Boag), who is off her meds, but onto her
husband’s dalliance. Who happens to be Caroline. And there are sharp utensils.
(I won’t spoil anything, but I will say to those who worry, the play does not enter into Grand Guignol
territory. The comedy is dark, but not that
dark.) Mostly, it dramatizes characters so caught up in their own michegoss that they can’t notice the apparent and equal
emotional pain of those closest to them. If you’d categorize this play as
anything, you might call it an unravelling.
A hugely successful British comedy currently touring
the UK (with Brits off-Broadway at 59E59 being a brief visit before returning
to Merrie Olde), it is well-directed (and, one must
add, traffic managed) by Alastair Whatley. The cast is right on point
(pun intended) and at least some of the cast will be familiar to fans of Brit
TV (especially Ms. Langische, a star over there). As
to the play itself—?
As I say, its comedic sensibility is very British,
in the sense that (to borrow a distinction brilliantly observed by Stephen
Fry), British comedy often delights in its losers (i.e. Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers),
whereas American comedy tends to celebrate survivors (i.e. Sam Malone of Cheers, or Murphy Brown); and this one is very much about the absurdity to be
found in desperation and despair. The American audience with whom I saw it
seemed with it (as those interested in a series of Brit theatrical imports may
well), the laughs landed when there were actual jokes (it seems in sections to
go a long time without) and I’m liking it more as I think about it.
Go to David Spencer's Profile
Return to Home Page