Poor Behavior
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Cititour.com Review
What exactly can you say about a play where a frequently drunk, argumentative, and coyly dishonest Irish guy is the most sympathetic character on stage – and it’s not something written by Eugene O’Neill? By the end of Theresa Rebeck’s “Poor Behavior,” now receiving its New York premiere at the Duke on 42nd Street courtesy of Primary Stages, words like shallow, glib, unconvincing, and unpleasant come to mind. However, director Evan Cabnet must also share the blame in this case, both for never finding a consistent tone for the work and miscasting some of its players.
I’m not sure why Rebeck, who has written much better plays like “Mauritius” and “The Scene,” actually penned this seemingly pointless piece, which is about two unhappy couples spending part of a weekend together. Not only does the result play like a third-rate version of such masterworks as “Dinner With Friends” or “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, but the play’s ultimate message -- other than all people behavior badly in the worst of all situations – is shockingly unclear. True, we laugh occasionally at Rebeck’s clever one-liners, but we also cringe a lot, not to mention constantly wonder why Rebeck left out so many pertinent details about her characters, like what anyone on stage does for a living.
We first meet this quarrelsome foursome while Ian (Brian Avers) is in the midst of a long, drunken, and ultimately boring fight about the meaning of goodness, beauty, morality, and semiotics with the equally inebriated Ella (Katie Kreisler), his hostess for the weekend. Much of the play’s plot revolves around whether Ian and Ella are actually sleeping together, which is something both Ian’s frequently hysterical wife Maureen (Heidi Armbruster) and Ella’s milquetoast husband Peter (Jeff Biehl) come to believe is true.
Avers is the show’s saving grace, giving a highly animated and deeply felt performance as Ian. Yes, Ian tells the truth as easily as he lies, but he still engenders a little bit of our sympathy. One also feels some empathy for Ella, thanks to Kreisler, who has good chemistry with Avers and displays both brains and sex appeal. Still, her Ella is hardly the kind of light-hearted spirit Ian claims her to be later in the play, and I wish Kreisler had managed to smile at least once.
Armbruster, who I’ve admired in works like “Disgraced,” simply has a far too dignified and intelligent presence to be even remotely believable as the prone-to-bawling Maureen. And Biehl can’t maneuver his way around his badly unwritten role; he’s so boring in the early going that you want to go to sleep while he’s onstage, and when his “hidden” temper finally erupts later on, you begin to think he’s going to find a bunny in his backyard and boil it. (Fear not, he settles for ripping out his wife’s supposedly beloved basil plants.)
Maybe in another production, Rebeck’s play would be more satisfying, but this poorly executed outing does “Poor Behavior” no favors.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
http://primarystages.org/poorbehavior
Cast
Heidi Armbruster, Brian Avers, Jeff Biehl, Katie Kreisler
Open/Close Dates
Opening 7/29/2014
Closing 9/7/2014
Box Office
646-223-3010
Theatre Info
The Duke on 42nd Street
229 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
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