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New Adam Rapp play about nasty WASPs suggests an Edward Albee nightmare

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Do you have a friend or a business associate who always shows considerable ability but never delivers whatever they keep promising to provide? At what point do you finally lose patience and consider dismissing said individual completely?

Such are my feelings today about prolific playwright Adam Rapp in the inexpiable light of his latest work, “Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling,” which premiered Monday in a swank Atlantic Theater Company production at Classic Stage.

A mildly surreal comedy-drama, the 80-minute play regards two wealthy Connecticut families sharing an increasingly uneasy dinner.

The hosts are the Cabots, consisting of the aggressive Sandra (Christine Lahti), her milquetoast husband Bertram (Reed Birney) and their depressed daughter Cora (Katherine Waterston). The guests are the three Von Stofenbergs: Dirk (Cotter Smith) is a distinguished but somewhat shady banker, his wife Celeste (Betsy Aidem) is a gentle author of children’s books and their son James (Shane McRae) is recovering from a terrible accident that may or may not have been suicidal in intent.

While the weather outdoors turns weird, all of these troubled or clueless characters express various thoughts regarding flying or falling as they chow down on their cooked goose – really, how obvious is that? – served by the maid Wilma (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) even as more fowl keeps thudding fatally against the house.

Imagery involving other wild animals arises that shadows Sandra’s plot to get Dirk to murder Bertram and make a new life with her. At one point, when their parents go elsewhere in the mansion, Cora and James madly copulate on the dining room table while Wilma vainly tries to save the china and crystal.

And the point of all this heavy breathing escapes me entirely. Everybody is a beast?

Whatever, this puzzling and unsatisfying affair suggests that Rapp has been reading a lot of Edward Albee dramas lately and decided to try his not untalented hand at creating an elegant study in enigmatic sorrows. If that’s the case, he does not succeed in a very big way.