New York theatre
Haves and have-nots
Putting America’s financial inequality on the stage
Apr 2nd 2016 | NEW YORK | From the print edition
Looking up fortune cookies THERE is something familiar about the Blakes, the American family at the centre of “The Humans”, a new play by Stephen Karam that is now on Broadway. Anyone who has navigated the emotional minefield of a family meal will recognise the affectionate way they bicker, their barbs softened with tenderness. But something else about this family will also resonate with a growing group of Americans: each member is struggling financially.
Over the course of the fraught feast, it becomes clear that the youngest daughter (Sarah Steele), an aspiring composer, is working nights as a bartender to pay off her student loans. Her sister (Cassie Beck) is about to lose her job as a lawyer after calling in sick too often. Their parents are in their 60s, but neither can afford to retire, particularly now that they are stuck paying the grandmother’s mounting medical bills. The mother (Jayne Houdyshell), a veteran office manager, complains that the 20-something “kids” she works for earn five times her salary “just ’cause they have a special degree.” But no one sounds more bitter or frustrated than the father (the excellent Reed Birney), who recently lost his job of 28 years at a school. “I thought I’d be settled by my age, you know, but man, it never ends,” he gripes. “Don’tcha think it should cost less to be alive?”
This conversation resembles countless others across the country, as Americans try to make sense of an economy in which working hard is no longer enough to afford a comfortable life. Parents who assumed that their children would surpass their own accomplishments are now startled to find so many of them sweating
over rent and saddled with college debt. What does it take to get ahead? Why does the system create so few haves and so many have- nots? These questions are pushing voters towards presidential candidates who promise to blow up the status quo. They are also inspiring a generation of playwrights.
“Hungry”, at the Public Theatre until April 3rd, is the first in a trilogy from Richard Nelson to look at a single American family over the course of this odd election year (pictured). Like the Blakes, the Gabriels sit at the kitchen table talking about a country they increasingly have trouble recognising, and an economy that is leaving them behind. In “Hold on to Me Darling”, a funny new play by Kenneth Lonergan (at the Atlantic Theatre Company until April 17th), Timothy Olyphant is hilarious as Strings McCrane, a swanning, impulsive, narcissistic celebrity who has more money than he knows what to do with. Without moralising, this play nicely illustrates some of the bizarre consequences of an economy in which the spoils of wealth are in the hands of a lucky few. Many of these dramas show ordinary Americans grappling with spiralling expenses. In Mona Mansour’s “The Way West”, produced by the Labyrinth Theatre Company at the Bank Street Theatre, Deirdre O’Connell is magical as an ageing mother who spins yarns about plucky pioneers to distract herself from the problems of her own life. Having lost her job at a tyre shop, she cannot quite remember the last time she paid her bills, nor can she afford to see a doctor about her mysteriously immobile arm. The housing market has just collapsed, and most of her neighbours in dusty Stockton, California, have already abandoned their homes. Her grown-up daughters are helping her file for bankruptcy, but they have financial woes of their own. Their mix of bad luck and poor choices sends them into a situation that seems comically dire. But instead of succumbing to despair, the mother takes a near-delusional comfort in yet more tales of early American fortitude, plainly unwilling to let go of the promise of the American dream.
Other plays ponder what it takes to make it to the top. “Dry Powder”, a darkly amusing new work from Sarah Burgess, directed for the Public Theatre by Thomas Kail (who also directed “Hamilton”, a popular musica l), considers the cunning machinations of the 1%. Hank Azaria plays a private-equity boss who is being “eviscerated” in the press for throwing himself a ritzy party on the very day his firm announced extensive lay-offs. “Of course they’re protesting, that’s what unemployed people do,” quips Jenny (Claire Danes), a particularly ruthless founding partner.
To help improve the firm’s “optics”, Seth (John Krasinski), another founding partner, has a plan that would create jobs and increase revenues at an American luggage company. Yet the firm also ponders making more money by gutting the company and moving manufacturing to Bangladesh. Ms Burgess has little regard
for the way such wheeling and dealing prioritises profits over people. This slick, fast-paced play will not win any awards for nuance, but it is entertaining.
For a more subtle look at the ethical challenges posed by a winner-takes-all economy, Lucas Hnath’s taut and profoundly good “Red Speedo”, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz at the New York Theatre Workshop, is on until April 3rd. Alex Breaux cuts a convincing figure as Ray, a lithe, monosyllabic competitive swimmer on the eve of the Olympics trials. For Ray, who lacks an education and lives in his car much of the time, qualifying for the Olympics is his only meal ticket. If he makes the cut he will be sponsored by Speedo in a deal that is worth “a lot of money”, assures his brother (Lucas Caleb Rooney), who works as his manager. When the stakes are so high, can Ray be blamed for taking drugs to help him compete? When so many others appear to be bending the rules, what is the value of heeding them? “Don’t I deserve a chance?” Ray pleads to his brother in the dark hours before the tryout. “Isn’t that the American thing?”。
