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Julia Murney portrays a beleaguered mom in Deanna Jent’s painful new drama

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

“Falling” is a harrowing look at a household that is being torn apart by a severely autistic 18-year-old boy.

This bleak new drama by Deanna Jent, which opened on Monday at the Minetta Lane Theater, presents a painful slice of life story that packs plenty of heartbreak in 75 minutes.

The play opens as Tami (Julia Murney) and Bill (Daniel Pearce) struggle to get their autistic son Josh (Daniel Everidge) ready for school. A hulking kid, Josh needs to be gingerly handled by his parents and younger sister Lisa (Jacey Powers), who ceaselessly engage him with games and distractions.

The noise of a barking dog outside or a blender in the kitchen is sufficient to trigger Josh into a flailing rage. His aggressive proclivities already have defeated a number of hired caregivers.

A visit from Bill’s Bible-toting mother, Grammy Sue (Celia Howard), who hasn’t seen Josh for several years, makes the family’s fragile balancing act even more precarious for them to maintain. “If Josh is happy then we’ll all be happy,” explains Tami. But it’s obvious that their constant vigilance over Josh has seriously undermined the harried couple’s marriage and their relationship with the resentful Lisa.

“Everything is falling apart,” admits Tami, although she remains reluctant to send Josh away to a group home in spite of his increasingly dangerous outbursts.

The overburdened, tippling Tami occasionally drifts off into brief flights of imagination. One of them regards a what-if sequence in which Josh no longer is part of the family equation. Tami’s subsequent feelings of guilt over that reverie only make her reality seem even worse.

Usually employed by musicals, Julia Murney provides a vivid portrait of a beleaguered mom. Daniel Everidge’s extremely realistic performance as Josh mingles sweet childishness with involuntary savagery. The other actors capably depict their characters.