Billy Crudup meets ‘The Metal Children’

Adam Rapp spins a strange fable on American culture wars

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Playwright Adam Rapp is off-Broadway's smoking volcano. Occasionally Rapp produces an explosive event like "Red Light Winter," but more usually his plays merely rumble or belch a lot of gas. Still, Rapp remains such an obviously talented writer that everybody wants to be there whenever he goes off.

Little wonder that the Vineyard Theatre has garnered the excellent likes of actors Billy Crudup, David Greenspan and Betsy Aidem among its nine-member company for the world premiere of Rapp's "The Metal Children," which opened Wednesday.

Neatly designed by David Korins and well acted under the author's direction, the play was inspired by Rapp's own experiences when a young-adults novel he wrote was banned by school officials in Pennsylvania. Still, "The Metal Children" drifts into strangeness that doesn't quite stack up as a drama.

Crudup portrays Tobin, a strung-out writer depressed by a busted marriage and appalled to learn his latest novel, "The Metal Children," has been confiscated by a provincial school board. Egged on by his agent (Greenspan), Tobin reluctantly travels out to the American heartland to discover that some of his book's bizarre doings involving mass pregnancy and wholesale disappearances are being emulated by local teenagers.

What's more, the town is plagued by a cultural vigilante committee roaring about in Porky Pig masks, vandalizing places and bashing people.

The drama partly climaxes during a town meeting when Tobin melts down and confides how he came to write his book. But the dangerous weirdness continues in the burg, leading to mayhem and death and yet somehow Tobin arrives at a semi-happy conclusion back in New York.

Frankly, the story spins so far off the rails that for awhile, I suspected the whole thing was meant to be a nightmare in Tobin's disordered head. Not so, as it turns out. Perhaps you'll go along for Rapp's dark ride more willingly. Certainly the play boasts some stretches of thoughtful, effective writing. But as an eerie fable on American cultural wars, "The Metal Children" is more fanciful than honestly provocative.

"The Metal Children" continues through June 13 at the Vineyard, 108 E. 15th St., New York. Call (212) 353-0303 or visit www.vineyardtheatre.org.