Theatre in Review: Children (The Actors Company Theatre/Theatre Row)

	Darrie Lawrence and Margaret Nichols. Photo: Stephen Kunken

The characters in Children are worried about erosion, as well they might be. The family's matriarch, standing on the terrace of her Massachusetts beach house, nervously eyes the Atlantic Ocean and says, "Some night, we'll be sitting here drinking and the whole house will slip into the sea." The statement is truer than she knows; in Children, an entire way of life is being eaten away by the waves of social change.

This little piece of prime oceanfront real estate, on an island that may be either Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard, is the beachhead where this family -- imagined by A. R. Gurney, by way of John Cheever -- has acted out the rituals of its class, year upon year. They consist of tennis, cocktails, and dances at the club, an endless round of social activities conducted among family and the friends one has known forever. There would be a timeless quality to this existence, except for the fact that it is 1970, and, suddenly, time is running out. It begins when Mother announces that she's giving up the beach house, passing it on to the next generation in order to marry "Uncle" Bill (in reality, a close friend of the family). Two of her thirtysomething children are shocked at first, but they have little right to be. Margaret, who is divorced, is sleeping with the married contractor she has yearned after for decades. Randy, her brother, is too busy pitching a fit about the condition of the tennis court to notice that his marriage is quietly failing. Everyone braces for a visit from Pokey, the third child and the clan's official black sheep. (Among other so-called transgressions, Pokey can't keep a career, his wife is Jewish, and his children wear blue jeans.) Upon arrival, Pokey sends shock waves through the household by announcing he wants his portion of the beach house in cash, and, if the others can't pay up, it will have to be sold.

As is usually the case, Gurney views this fraught family get-together through his own distinctive lens. For one thing, we never see Pokey -- the author prefers to leave him offstage, focusing instead on the havoc he is wreaking among his relatives. For another, Gurney makes it clear that much more is at stake than the deed to a house; if it is sold, this family -- and its traditions -- will mostly like slip from its foundation and fade into memory. Already, most of them are floundering badly, especially Barbara, with her tiny alimony checks and vague dreams of writing storybooks, and Randy, a schoolteacher who sees life as one big Game Day. "We're babies," says his disaffected wife, Jane. "We live on an island, here and at school."

Written in 1974, Children was Gurney's first full-length play, and while his camera eye for the absurdities of WASP society was fully in operation, his distinctive wit had yet to arrive on the scene. Watching Children, one misses the hilarity of such recent Gurney comedies as Black Tie or Indian Blood, in which WASP manners are submitted to an examination more thorough than any CT scan. Still, even in this early effort, the author had a knack for turning the tiniest social skirmish into a battle of world views. "Coke is for tennis players," snaps Barbara in her steeliest manner, upon hearing, to her horror, that Pokey's wife is serving the sugary soda to the children at lunch. Randy's ability to recall the exact score of every tennis match played on the family court for the last 20 years reveals volumes about his highly competitive and immature nature. The sight of Randy and Jane, dressed for a costume party -- he in a football uniform, she deeply embarrassed in her debutante gown -- tells you all you need to know about their stultified existence; it's all the more remarkable that Gurney gives them a quiet moment together, full of romance and rue.

You could say that, as is often the case with first-time writers, Gurney makes his point about the fragility of this Cheeverish universe almost too well, leaving Children in danger of becoming blunt and repetitive. It also teeters on the edge of soap opera at times, especially when Barbara and Mother sit down to politely trade charges of infidelity. But the characters' portraits are both sympathetic and stingingly true, and the action climaxes arrestingly, when Mother, sadly aware of the younger generation's limitations, lays down a new set of rules.

Even if Children now pales a bit besides Gurney's later works, it still looks pretty fresh in Scott Alan Evans' clean and clear-eyed staging, which is paced by four fine performances. As Mother, Darrie Lawrence -- with her upright posture, patrician vowels, and purposeful manner -- is a figure of effortless authority, even as she begins to confront the possibility that she may have raised a brood of weaklings and fools. Margaret Nichols is an ideal mixture of sarcasm and sadness as Barbara, hanging on to her youthful dreams for dear life even as she delivers scalding opinions about everyone else. Richard Thieriot's Randy has a naturally boyish charm, even when stomping around like a spoiled child; he's a charming prisoner of his own immaturity. Lynn Wright makes Jane's growing unhappiness thoroughly clear without resorting to anything like melodramatics.

For a play in which time and place are of enormous importance, the design team has met its challenges in first-rate fashion. Brett J. Banakis' set, with its weathered shingle-sided cottage and open terrace set against a bright ever-changing Atlantic sky, has the elegance of a New Yorker cover. Bradley King's lighting neatly suggests various times of day, providing dramatic sidelight looks for the nighttime denouement. (My only reservation is that, in the final scene, he could provide a tad more face light on Lawrence for her big speech.) Haley Lieberman's period-perfect costumes reveal, with uncanny precision, the differences between Brooks Brothers-style casual wear of 1970 and today. (The hairstyles are on-target, as well.) Stephen Kunken's sound design keeps the ocean constantly present, while fitting in other effects, including cars' engines, slamming doors, and firecrackers, along with some period pop tunes.

One of the latter is "You Can't Always Get What You Want," which is heard as the lights go up on Act I. It's a canny choice, for in Children, nobody seemingly gets what he or she wants; the best they can do is accept their shrinking world as gracefully as possible. If you're looking for big scenes and big emotions, Children may disappoint; voices are rarely raised and generally everyone minds their manners, even in moments of distress. But as the opening salvo in Gurney's lifelong study of a culture in decline, it is well worth your time. After a couple of weeks spent seeing plays loaded with vulgar and obvious effects, the elegance and subtlety of Gurney's writing had, for me, a tonic effect. --David Barbour