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“Smash” actor Michael Cristofer ably heads Stephen Belber’s new Off Broadway drama

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

As its decidedly familiar title suggests, “Don’t Go Gentle” presents a sorrowful story that many of us have seen before on stage, screen and perhaps even in some real-life variation.

Literally a dying white man, Lawrence is both a widower and a retired judge of a conservative bent. Ailing but still active, Lawrence counsels a pro bono legal client, Tanya, a dispossessed younger woman with a teenaged son. All too soon, Tanya and her son are residing in Lawrence’s house, much to the understandable concern of his two adult children, especially when he begins to reconsider his will.

So who here is taking advantage of whom?

Those are the essentials for Stephen Belber’s latest play, which opened on Sunday at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. The playwright mixes some interesting angles into his straightforward 90-minute drama, which occurs entirely in Lawrence’s genteel living room over the course of a month or two.

Tanya and her son, Rasheed, are African-American and it is possible that the conservative judge’s don’t-call-it-charity kindness to them is partly motivated by guilt over his harsh rulings from when he was on the bench. And while Lawrence’s daughter, Amelia, is seen as dutiful though carefully distant, his 30-something son, Ben, is both a wastrel and a troublemaker given to spewing poison about his dad.

The conclusion is not happy for anyone concerned and least of all for Lawrence.

“Don’t Go Gentle” turns out to be a simpler drama than it promises to be, but the ease and brevity of Belber’s conversational dialogue – possibly honed by his previous experience as a writer on “Law & Order: SVU” – speeds the story along nicely, although his characters tend to ask each other a lot of questions. The playwright wisely avoids sentimentality in his treatment of Lawrence and the others.

Director Lucie Tiberghien provides a neatly-staged and well-acted production for MCC Theater, which usually tends to present riskier plays than the domestic situation addressed by “Don’t Go Gentle.”

Best known to TV viewers for playing Angelica Huston’s estranged husband on the “Smash” series (and to theatergoers as the Pulitzer-winning author of “The Shadow Box”), Michael Cristofer portrays the dogmatic, irritable Lawrence with a voice that darkens at times with anger and burning eyes that hint at the man’s awareness of his eventual mortality.

Angela Lewis adeptly fleshes out Tanya’s sketchy character and Maxx Brawer does well by the truculent Rasheed. The conciliatory Amelia also seems to be an underwritten figure, but Jennifer Mudge gives her both warmth and a wariness that suggests she has witnessed many a nasty scene in her father’s house.