Theatre in Review: Austin (Theatre Row)

	Michaela Waites, Thomas G. Waites. Photo: Carol Rosegg

The Cassidy family is a hot mess, and so is the play that portrays them. Austin Cassidy is a former money manager who has just graduated from what may be his twelfth time in rehab. (For this round of recovery, he has been in the Berkshires, taking part in a program that relies on the therapeutic effects of gardening.) As you may imagine, this long-running, unsuccessful attempt at getting off the bottle has frayed the nerves of his nearest and dearest, beginning with his wife, Petra. Pandora, their 16-year-old daughter, is upset about a letter from Austin: "He says he tried to kill himself." "Oh, for heaven's sake," snaps Petra. "He's been sending those letters for years." A few minutes later, confusingly, we learn that Petra had previously told her daughter that Austin died. When Austin enters the family's Brooklyn apartment, ready to be greeted, Pandora turns accusingly on Petra: "You said the police were dragging the East River. That was traumatic for me, Mother. Jesus!"

Aside from berating Austin about his alcoholism, Petra blames him for not keeping her in the style to which she was born. The daughter of wealth, she and her sisters were dragged around Europe by their mother. ("We had to wear white gloves, all five of us," she says, dreamily.) At the moment, Petra's main concern is Pandora, who, as we used to say, gets around. Hiding out from her mother in the Hell's Kitchen brownstone owned by Martin, Austin's brother, Pandora lies around in a lawn chair, detailing her current beaux: There's François (or is it Pascal?), an investor from Lille, and Omar, who "claims to control the international market in black-seed honey from Saudi Arabia" -- not to mention Mansour, from the neighborhood deli, Amadou, a night mechanic for a taxi fleet, and Hector, a police detective. Martin, horrified, says, "You've had affairs with half the United Nations!"

So yes, Petra has reason to be worried, what with an underage daughter who thinks nothing of keeping half a dozen men on a string, and who talks about her chlamydia as if it were the common cold. Then again, Petra has a lot of nerve handing out lessons about the joys of purity: She spent her teen years lifting spoons from the best restaurants in Europe -- she still has her collection, over which she obsesses -- and, at the tender age of 14, learned to fellate middle-aged diplomats at dull embassy receptions. Lest you think she has seen the error of her ways, Petra is currently sleeping with Martin, who is, after all, her brother-in-law. Martin, who is loaded, keeps asking Petra to marry him: "That's what they do in the Middle East," he says. "The brother has to take on the widow." Quite apart from the fact that Austin isn't dead, I think we can all agree that we've heard more attractive proposals.

Exactly why Austin wants back in with this crowd is difficult to say. As played by Thomas G. Waites, who combines his weathered looks with a deliberately childish manner, it's hard to believe he ever guided anyone's stock portfolio, or that he ever had five happy minutes with the coolly patrician Petra. (Trying to explain how she ended up with Austin, she says, "Haven't you read The Makioka Sisters? I had to get started so my sisters could marry." -- conveniently forgetting that she wasn't born into a bourgeois, pre-World War II Japanese family.) Austin calls Pandora his "magic princess," a rather creepy term, given all that we know about her; even creepier is his fondness for painting her toenails. Austin resents that Martin made him sign over his half of the family's house in return for financing stays in various sanatoria; he also forces Martin to discuss their family history of physical abuse. And then there's Andy, the strapping young rehab counselor who drops by to help Austin with his gardening and to discuss "that night in the orchard," but who is also not immune to the charms of Pandora.

If I haven't made myself clear, let me state for the record that Austin is a real lulu, an undercooked Mulligan stew of family dysfunctions. The playwright, Edla Cusick, has no knack for creating plausible characters; everyone in Austin is a diagnostic category posing as a human being. Not only does she have no idea how to structure a scene or build to a curtain line, the play unfolds in ten scenes over the course of 90 minutes, and it often seems as if half of the running time is taken up watching stagehands rearrange furniture in the dark.

Whatever attracted Waites, an actor with a very solid television career, to this material remains mysterious; I certainly hope it wasn't the scene in which he staggers around Martin's roof, three sheets to the wind, hurling accusations and howling at the injustice of it all. Ed Setrakian's direction has not been able to solve the script's many technical problems (such as all those scene changes), and his handling of the cast is extremely variable. Waites' daughter, Michaela, manages to give a slight patina of appeal to the reckless and self-involved Pandora, and AJ Cedeño nicely handles the impossible role of Andy. Tsubasa Kamei's set at least creates an evocative surround of New York townhouses, and his lighting, like Kate Clifford's costumes, is fairly solid. Miles Polaski's sound design creates a strong sense of the city beyond Martin's Hell's Kitchen backyard.

Austin ends in a melodramatic gambit that offers two wildly differing endings, one of which turns out to be a fake. Like everything else in the play, it is so awkwardly written and staged as to be unintentionally risible. This family needs therapy, stat; so does Austin, the play. -- David Barbour