I’m Ian. I’m a pussycat, really, as
reviewers go: I don’t ignore flaws, but more often than not I forgive
them. But sometimes there’s so little weight to a play, so little
analysis to be done, that I just start recounting it right upfront.
Like this. Like Matthew Perry’s character, and his three fellows
(played by Christina Cole, Jennifer Mudge and the underused Lloyd
Owen), do right at the beginning of Perry’s own first play. Rather than
bother with dramatic exposition, they just stand up there and introduce
themselves. There are periodic soliloquies throughout the play, too. I
suspect that Perry might think he’s ringing the changes on different
dramatic registers, but what he’s doing is failing to digest
information into the drama.
That drama consists simply of several months in the history of two
relationships. Jack and Joseph are best buddies; so are Stephanie and
Stevie. They meet up one night more or less by coincidence, and things
go from there. The relationships are all we have to focus on. Nobody’s
work ever interferes directly with events, even when Jack loses his job
as a photographer (How could he? Wouldn’t he be self-employed?) because
of his drinking and even though – in a piece of dramatic and moral
equivalence which is questionable in a number of ways – Stephanie is a
high-class escort. When these gilded Los Angelenos start arguing about
what constitutes “a normal life”, you can’t help doubting their
authority on the subject.
Perry’s Jack is, well, very Matthew Perry. He has that arch delivery,
and sometimes even in the 800-capacity Playhouse he needs to use his
indoor voice instead. As author, he does not give Jack an easy time of
it: he is candid about his fear of sobriety and hatred of himself when
sober. Jack is certainly rather more vapid when not tanked up, and
given to outpourings of distress which lend him an odd resemblance to
Beaker from the Muppets. It’s a screen actor’s conception of stage
acting, as his writing is a screen actor’s conception of offscreen
relationships. Lindsay Posner, as usual, directs with efficiency but
little stamp of individuality.
Jack's final monologue to an AA meeting may explain Perry’s deployment
of that form through the play, and there’s no doubting the sincerity of
the sentiments, quite possibly informed by Perry’s own experiences of
addiction. But at root the only message is “people can change”, and
it’s neither deeply nor originally expressed.
Written for the Financial
Times.