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Article IndexLinda Lavin depicts a widow-to-be in Nicky Silver’s bitter new comedy
BY MICHAEL SOMMERS
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
OFF BROADWAY REVIEW
After winning plaudits for her performances in “Other Desert Cities” for Lincoln Center Theater and “Follies” at the Kennedy Center earlier this year, Linda Lavin chose not to go to Broadway in either show.
Instead, Lavin is taking a flier off Broadway with “The Lyons,” a bitterly funny new play by Nicky Silver that premiered Tuesday at the Vineyard Theatre.
Lavin’s role of a 60-something suburban matron on the verge of widowhood is a juicy one and Lavin’s portrayal of the seemingly oblivious Rita Lyons is marvelous in every microscopic detail.
Silver’s latest comedy itself is not entirely marvelous. Following a darkly hilarious first act, the play subsides into a familiar groove of misery that the playwright has travelled several times before.
While her dying husband Ben (Dick Latessa, natural as always) rages at her from a hospital bed, Rita calmly reads a decorating magazine and plans re-doing the living room. “I realize you won’t actually be there to enjoy it, but I’d like to think you’d like it,” she tells Ben.
The tastefully dressed Rita is never flustered and somehow always utters just the right thing to irk her family. The loser products of Rita’s loveless marriage are Lisa (Kate Jennings Grant), a semi-recovered alcoholic with an abusive ex-husband, and Curtis (Michael Esper), a writer whose personal life is not as content as he pretends. It’s soon obvious that these siblings care little for each other.
Upon arrival, the kids are shocked to discover that Ben has been sick for months and is about to expire. “Why burden you?” says Rita. “You have your own problems.” The remainder of the first act sees the characters not making their farewells but instead wrangling with each other while recalling their bad times as an unhappy family. It’s very nasty and often funny stuff that peals with the ugly ring of truth.
Then the story detours into a sequence in an empty apartment involving Curtis and Brian (Gregory Wooddell), a cute rental agent, that reveals the former’s creepily obsessive nature, which is a theme explored by earlier Silver works. Later, the now-widowed Rita reveals her future plans to her children.In spite of its occasional confessional monologues, “The Lyons” is not an entirely satisfying depiction of a miserable contemporary family. Essentially, the early estrangement of Rita and Ben is insufficiently told so the fallout from their marriage is not rendered for all of its radioactive worth.
