By Lauren Yarger
How ironic would it be for a play with a proofreader's mark for a title about an editor who fine tunes literary works to be sorely in need of writing revision itself? This is the sad story for Molly Smith Metzler's Close Up Space presented Off-Broadway by Manhattan Theatre Club.
Even stars David Hyde Pierce and Rosie Perez, both always fun to watch in action, can't help this incoherent, incredulous tale of an estranged father and daughter from Metzler (Elemeno Pea). Here, the title involves a play on a proofreading mark that means to remove space between two words to avoid a change in meaning, like "closeup" instead of "close up." Editor's note, when you have to do this much explaining just to understand the title, there's a good chance the play won't make too much sense either.
Hyde Pierce is Paul, an editor at Tandem Books, a small Manhattan publishing house, who coped with the suicide of his wife by shipping their daughter, Harper (Colby Minifie), off to boarding school. The plan to keep her out of sight/out of mind didn't work, though, as evidenced by numerous letters Paul has received from the headmaster recounting Harper's bizarre, destructive behavior and reporting that she has been expelled. With expletive-filled venom and frustration, Paul corrects the grammar in the letters while projecting them on an overhead for nervous new-hire Bailey (Jessica DiGiovanni) who begins to wonder whether this literary internship really is worth the one credit she needs to graduate.
If that's not crazy enough work-place behavior for you, just wait. Inept, freeloading office manager Steve (Michael Chernus) has fallen on hard times and is camping out at the office overnight -- literally -- with a tent and a campfire. Paul isn't too happy to discover this, or that Steve has been feeding his fish (Editor's note: don't you dare stop reading -- no one in the theater could leave either. There's no intermission.)
The editor is even more upset, though, by the guilt he feels over being attracted to his number-one client: foul-mouthed, demanding, best-seller Vanessa Finn Adams (Perez) who has made it clear that she's interested in a romantic relationship even though Paul calls her work "boring chick poo." Some of Perez' dialogue is hard to catch, particularly if she is yelling at the top of her lungs. Other times, Vanessa is quoting classical dialogue for no real reason, convincing us that whatever we missed while she was yelling probably didn't matter any way.
Enter Harper, who screams for a long time at everyone in Russian (why, we're not exactly sure) about how she won't leave her homeland while tossing snowballs from a stash she carries around in a cooler, before eventually condescending to speak English with kindly Steve. Oddly, Paul never seems to wonder, as we do, whether his daughter is suffering from some of the mental issues affecting her mother before she went off meds and took her life, but I suppose that would be too logical a sequence of events for this play.
Instead, Harper launches on a bizarre campaign to get her father's attention by sending him obscure Russian poems and stealing all of the contents of his office, including her new best-friend-in-less-than-an-hour Vanessa's hot new manuscript. Will the father who always has responded to his daughter with an ellipsis be able to fill in the meaningful words she needs to hear? Editor's note: let's hope they aren't in Russian or we'll never know.
The highlight here is Hyde Pierce. "Don't feed my fish, Steve" isn't a line that guarantees humor, but the skilled Hyde Pierce gets a laugh with it and others. Whenever he leaves the stage, however, the energy level goes with him, though the other actors admirably try to do what they can with their material. DiGiovanni, making her Off-Broadway debut, could have used some extra coaching from director Leigh Silverman to make Bailey's nervous reactions appear more believable, however.
Also not working here is the awkward scene where all the furniture from Paul's office "vanishes." Todd Rosenthall's handsome set simply is moved off into the side wing where it sits plainly visible while everyone on stage exclaims about how it is missing.
Editor's note: send this one back for a rewrite.
Close Up Space is at New York City Center Stage I, 131 West 55thSt., NYC through Jan. 29. For tickets, call 212-581-1212.
Christians might also like to know:
-- Language (fairly strong)
-- God's name taken in vain
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