‘When the Rain Stops Falling’ explores our missing links

New drama crisscrosses 80 years of a family's sad ancestry

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Crisscrossing some 80 years and four generations of a family's history in England and Australia, "When the Rain Stops Falling" is a thoroughly sorrowful new drama by Canadian writer Andrew Bovell, author of film and stage works like "Strictly Ballroom" and "Speaking in Tongues."

While it's a pleasure to witness some exquisite acting by the likes of Mary Beth Hurt as an embittered old lady, Will Rogers as her melancholy son who seeks his long-disappeared father and Victoria Clark as a middle-aged woman slowly losing her mind, the play that made its U.S. premiere Monday in a Lincoln Center Theater production at its Newhouse space tends to be a soggy downer.

Fairly summarizing the nine characters' family connections is impossible here (especially with two named Gabriel and the other Gabrielle), so let's just say that everybody turns out to be more or less miserable for various reasons. Somebody is revealed as a pederast, another dies in a car crash, one becomes an alcoholic ... and usually the weather is lousy.

Director David Cromer, who did so beautifully by the current "Our Town" and this season's short-lived "Brighton Beach Memoirs," again obtains some especially touching performances from his actors. Cromer also inspires effectively bleak atmospherics through designer David Korins' cunning use of a double revolve on a translucent floor to juxtapose different generations slowly moving towards and away from each other. Fitz Patton provides aural variations on thunderous downpours.

Unfortunately, Cromer's production does not always successfully convey changes in time and location. Even with a family tree printed in the playbill, it's difficult to figure out who's who.

Of course, the playwright is exploring a theme regarding the missing but still-felt links in one's ancestry. Perhaps the staging's haziness is intentional.

In spite of the story's intermittent fog, Bovell and Cromer together create some admirable moments of somber beauty as when Hurt drinks and contemplates the past or when Clark's pensive character fiercely counsels her younger self at a decisive point.

Still, "When the Rain Stops Falling" ultimately proves to be a terribly gloomy two hours with scant uplift aside from the poignant realization that fleeing one's past is a natural passage of life.

"When the Rain Stops Falling" continues through April 18 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, 150 W. 65th St., New York. Call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.lct.org.