Restaurant Serves Up Desires for Family, Belonging in a Hungry America
By Lauren Yarger
No matter how bad times get, we always have family. But what
happens if that’s not true? Where do we find our sense of roots, belonging and
support then?
These are the questions raised in Pocatello, the premiere of a new play by award-winning
playwright Samuel D. Hunter
at Playwrights Horizons Off-Broadway in New York.
Pocatello is a small town in Idaho, where Eddie (T.R.
Knight of TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy” fame) runs an Italian chain restaurant
franchise that he is pouring his own savings into to postpone the closing that corporate
is telling him must occur. The restaurant is everything to Eddie: his claim of
a place in his hometown and a source of existence for his extended family of
employees.
That group consists of Max (Cameron Scoggins),
a drug user who is grateful to Eddie for giving him a job when no one else
would; Isabelle (Elvy
Yost), a waitress who
utters profanity while trying to keep service running smoothly; and Troy (Danny
Wolohan), who took a waiting
job to avoid a move that would make his daughter, Becky (Leah Karpel), have to switch schools when he
lost his job at the local paper mill. They all appreciate Eddie. He’s the best
boss, after all, since he puts up with their trysts in the back room, pot
smoking and hasn’t had the heart to tell them that the restaurant needs to
close.
His idea to sponsor an employee “Famiglia
Week” doesn’t go over so
well, though, since dysfunctional is a mild term for the family members who come
for dinner.
Troy’s alcoholic wife, Tammy (Jessica Dickey),
wonders whether she would have been better off with old beau Eddie while coping
with Tory's father, Cole (Jonathan Hogan), who suffers from Alzheimer's, bulimic daughter Becky who can’t eat anything -- especially meat -- because
of the processes used in preparing it. She rattles on excessively about cows
getting caught in slaughter machinery and promptly sours the evening.
Eddie’s mother, Doris (Brenda Wehle)
can’t seem to find anything on the menu she likes either and brother, Nick
(Brian Hutchinson) can’t wait to get out of the place. Is it his loathing of
being back in the town that holds bad memories of his father, or is it that he
is uncomfortable around his homosexual brother? The only one who seems
genuinely pleased to be there and to make an effort at reuniting family is Nick’s
wife, Kelly (Crystal Finn), who urged her husband to make the trip home.
Davis McCallum, who directed Hunter’s
sensitive and moving play The Whale
at Playwrights in 2012, returns here and creates an atmosphere (with the restaurant
set designed by Lauren Helpern and music/sound
ambiance designed by Matt Tierney) that keeps us interested. Knight, in
particular, delivers a solid portrayal of a man losing control, but unable to
figure out what to do to make things better.
The play
itself is flawed. Too many people thrown at us in the opening scene with run-on
conversations makes it difficult to figure out who’s who and what is going on.
In addition, Wehle doesn’t look old enough to be Eddie’s mother, so at first I
thought she was Nick’s wife and the young-looking Finn was their daughter
making it even more confusing.
The
action evens out, but Hunter, who is a 2014 MacArthur Foundation
“Genius,” fails to take us as deeply into the characters as we need to go. What
exactly happened with Eddie and Nick’s father? Why did Eddie and Doris become
estranged and what motivates her to make a renewed effort to reach out to her
son?
We leave with a feeling of despair
in an atmosphere where family relationships appear to be going the same way as small-town
life -- replaced by chains and strip
malls rather – rather than with hope in the staple of family relationships,
which I think is on Hunter’s take-out menu.
Christians might also like to know:
-- Language
-- Lord's name taken in vain
-- Homosexuality
-- Sexual dialogue
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