Theater Review: The Language Archive

Words Say Mean a Lot -- or Not -- in Relationships
By Lauren Yarger
The floor-to-ceiling shelves cluttered with books and knickknacks (Neil Patel, set design) are the backdrop for the home an office life of a man stuck between his love for preserving dying languages and his inability to express himself adequately in his native tongue.

The communication between linguist George (Matt Letscher), his wife Mary (Heidi Schreck) and his assistant, Emma (Betty Gilpin), are explored with playwright Julia Cho’s own gift for intelligent insight and lyrical language, but unless you’re someone like me, who preferred staying in the dorm room in college to research etymologies while your friends went to the kegger, the charm of Roundabout Theatre’s The Language Archive, playing Off Broadway might by ephemeral. (In other words, if you can’t define etymology or ephemeral, this play might not be for you.)

George is unable to express his feelings or to say I love you to Mary, who resorts to leaving notes around the house in the hopes that they will prompt him. He’s more excited about preserving languages that are close to extinction. When a language dies, so does the imagination, memory and way of life for the people who spoke it, he says, and that fills him with a passion he doesn’t seem to have for Mary. In fact, the linguist has nothing to say when she tells him she’s leaving.

Meanwhile, as Emma assists George in his recordings of languages, she’s unable to express the love she feels for her boss, even in the man-made language esperantos which he adores. They both learn some valuable lessons from an elderly couple, Alta (Jayne Houdyshell) and Resten (John Horton), the last speakers of an extinct language, who provide some of the play’s comic relief (Houdyshell and Horton also play a few other characters along the way). Mary, on the other hand, has no trouble expressing herself, but seems constantly surprised at the words that she utters.

It’s interesting, again insofar as you’re willing to immerse yourself in the language and the subtleties of the communication between the characters, but the lack of a real plot and a pronounced depreciation of momentum (OK, I could have said the pace slows, but I’m trying to be worthy of the linguistic lovers who still might be reading this review) in the second act fail to keep us on board. Some of the staging (Mark Brokaw, director) is hard to define as well, with George apparently asleep on a table or nearby for some reason when some other characters interact.

The Language Archive plays a limited run through Dec. 19 at the Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th St., NYC. Tickets are available by calling 212-719-1300.

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• Language (no pun intended)
• Homosexuality discussed in dialogue
• God’s name taken in vain