Review: The American Plan

Some Plans Unravel

By Lauren Yarger
What do a young heiress, her overbearing mother, a handsome suitor and a mysterious visitor add up to? Not what you’re thinking. No matter what you’re thinking.

It’s supposed to add up to The American Plan, the ideal of what we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to act, but nothing is what it seems in Richard Greenberg’s play at The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in New York. It’s almost like the playwright started out as with a treatment of Henry James’ “Washington Square,” but got a modern triangle instead.

Heiress Lili Adler (Lily Rabe) woos men, apparently a new one each year, from the hotel across the lake from where she and her Jewish war refugee mother, Eva (Mercedes Ruehl), summer in the 1960s Catskills. Lili loathes her mother, known to locals as the “czarina,” who sang lullabies about Nazis and happiness only being for other people. Lili also believes Eva murdered her father. She feels more affection for the maid, Olivia, (Brenda Pressley).

This year’s conquest is Nick Lockridge (Kieran Campion), a dashing WASPy journalist. All goes according to plan until a mysterious guest, Gil Harbison (Austin Lysy), arrives. Is Nick really who he claims to be? Is Eva obsessively trying to suffocate her daughter’s happiness or is she protecting Lili from someone trying to take advantage of her? Will Lili be able to escape from her mothers control? Is she really as naïve as everyone thinks? The answers play out in several plot twists at the lake and 10 years later in a New York apartment and reveal that the best knitted plans often unravel.

Ruehl is commanding as the imperial and hardened Eva (there’s a great metaphor about her soaking in salt water), and does justice to the bits of humor found in Greenberg’s script, but the performance isn’t enough to give the story the oompf it needs to make us care about these people. Olivia is underdeveloped and leaves questions about why she is there and what the nature of her relationship is with the two women. Under David Grindle’s direction, Rabe’s portrayal of Lili is strong, robust and energetic, with her emotions boiling over in contradiction with the script, which seems to indicate Lili’s emotions would simmer under a lid of insecurity and mental instability. She seems more formidable than Eva.

Jonathan Fensom (scenic and costume design) offers a sparse set with a large dock that rotates and tree-painted curtains that swish by in front and back of it during scene changes. Some of the characters appeared in the same costumes although days were supposed to have passed.

The American Plan never quite delivers or satisfies, failing itself, like its main theme, to live up to the ideal of what everyone expects.

Christians might also like to know:
• God’s name taken in vain
• Sex outside of marriage
• Homosexual activity