There is nothing sadder than leaving a Broadway theater uninspired.
Yet that was my feeling last night after I saw Dividing the Estate. The play was, frankly, mediocre. What a shame. I expect to leave Broadway with my heart singing - in some way - either by the music, the clever jokes, some wonderful character or perhaps just musing some thoughtful revere sparked by the dialog. Nope.
Here is what I got: Dysfunctional family with one dimensional characters; weak actors playing the secondary roles* with stiff presentation (you never left the fact that this was a play and the people merely players. That is a bad thing. I want magic! I want to be transported.); a plot that is nothing more than the longest, most boring, one joke story in history. The combination was just not working for me.
Somewhat notable is actress Hallie Foote, who plays youngest daughter/high strung mother/biggest whiner Mary Jo. She has great timing and subtle physical comedy that makes me think that she'd be amazing if the character had any more than a two-step spectrum of emotional depth. Instead, her high anxiety and angst never dims, and so the character is tiring and fades from interesting to predictable rather early in the show.
To regain my love of the magic of theater, tonight I am heading out to Slava's Snow Show- a wonderful experience that I saw last year and just loved. It's truly fantastic, in both sense of that word - wonderful and phantasmagoric. It will be nice to ring in the near year with some clowns!
*With one exception. The young actress who plays the uncle's teen-age love interest enters the stage with five minutes to curtain and is so energetic and cringing inappropriate (as a teen-ager would be) that she infused the ending with a new pulse. She's so unimportant however, that her name (and character) is not even listed on the website. Hmm. What does that tell you?!
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