Theatre in Review: Rancho Viejo (Playwrights Horizons)

	Julia Duffy, Mark Blum., Mark Zeisler, Mare Winningham. Photo: Joan Marcus

The suburbs can be spooky; just ask Dan LeFranc, who, in his last play, The Big Meal -- a kind of contemporary homage to Thornton Wilder's The Long Christmas Dinner -- showed a real knack for gently discovering the skull beneath the skin of everyday life. It's not for nothing that the many homes referenced in Rancho Viejo are all represented by the antiseptic, barely furnished ranch house setting designed by Dane Laffrey. For one thing, the characters all live in the same bedroom community, which apparently consists of nothing but tract houses. For another, whether they know it or not, they all share the same faint sense of unease over lives of plenty and banality; they don't need to hear Peggy Lee singing to wonder, Is that all there is?

At first, the malaise seems to be confined to the newcomers: Pete, a recent retiree, and Mary, his wife. They're getting ready for a cocktail party when Pete drops the question, "Are you happy?" What follows is a droll exposition of marital crosstalk: He pursues the point and she, refusing to believe that he wants to discuss the meaning of life while getting ready to go out, parries him with other questions intended to deflate the topic. First, he comments that she frequently looks sad, a charge she disputes. Then he adds, "I think the fact we're even having this conversation kinda speaks to a level of self-awareness, a level of... curiosity... specialness... maybe... which... which I'd guess most people don't have....obviously, I can't peek into their bedrooms and listen in on their private conversations."

Pete's interest in others will be put to the test when, at the party, they chat up Gary and Patti, who let drop that their son, Richard, is going through a messy divorce after less than a year of marriage -- and with his soon-to-be-ex-wife pregnant. Pete becomes comically obsessed with Richard's marital problems, losing sleep over the news that Richard is dating a coworker, and finally making pseudonymous phone calls to the young man, urging him to rethink his life decisions. To cover his tracks, he uses Gary and Patti's phone. It's a strategy that nearly explodes in Pete's face when Richard reports the call back to his parents and Leon, another in the crowd and an IT expert, steps in to figure exactly what is going on.

If Pete's bizarre, often hilarious fixation on Richard (whom he never meets) is a kind of displacement for his anxiety over his comfortable, largely idle existence, Mary, still mourning the loss of her best friend (in an unspecified conflict), struggles to bond with Patti and Suzanne, who constitute the play's pie-eyed, tough-minded Greek chorus. As played by Julia Duffy and Lusia Strus, they carry on like refugees from a Real Housewives franchise, knocking back glass after glass of wine while providing martini-dry commentary. The best of frenemies, they are rivals in real estate and specialists in the art of one-upmanship, cutting others down to size without a second thought. In one of the play's more amusing exchanges, Mary tries to interest the ladies in joining her at the local art fair; when Mary, who can be more than a little platitudinous, announces of art, "Well, it can change lives," Patti and Suzanne casually shred that proposition, bringing their menfolk into the conversation, and leaving poor Mary defenseless.

If Duffy and Strus are doing peerless work, they are in very good company. Mark Blum makes Pete's high anxiety over a pair of total strangers into a constant source of amusement and suspense, keeping us wondering exactly how far his meddling will take him. Mare Winningham, an actress who never seems less than pitch-perfect, is wickedly entertaining when sparring with her husband, and quietly heartbreaking when, getting ready for bed, she says, "You know, I almost made a friend tonight." Also making excellent contributions are Mark Zeisler as Gary, who is writing a book of his thoughts, an alarming prospect since he speaks almost entirely in clichés ("What's up, muchacho?") and Tyrone Mitchell Henderson as Leon, Suzanne's partner and the group's token African-American; especially treasurable is his reaction to Mary's comment on meeting his and Suzanne's pet dog ("I thought he'd be black."). As Anita, late of Mexico, Ruth Aguilar releases lengthy volleys in Spanish, a language nobody else understands, the name of their community notwithstanding; as her husband, Mike, Bill Buell translates for her, offering some tasty examples of fractured Spanish -- that is, when he isn't cruising the buffet table at whatever party they're all attending, filling up a quart plastic bag with plenty of tasty treats.

Gradually, as a series of misfortunes -- a lost dog, a case of macular degeneration, a sudden death -- befall this crowd, they pull together as, one by one, they become quietly gripped by the sheer mystery of why they're alive. Or, as Suzanne puts it, "I've been sitting here for so long! And, God, you know what I've realized? I sell real estate, Pete! In Rancho Viejo! Do you know what that means?! No! No! I didn't mean what does it mean! I know what it means!...No...God!" That's about as articulate as anyone gets in Rancho Viejo, but the message comes through loud and clear. LeFranc has written a metaphysical comedy about people who couldn't care less about metaphysics -- that is, if they know the tiniest thing about it.

This kind of comedy needs especially delicate handling, which Daniel Aukin provides; his deft touch is especially welcome, because Rancho Viejo isn't without its problems. A three-act play running three hours, it is much longer than it needs to be. LeFranc could easily lose the character named Taters; an adolescent who is inexplicably befriended by Gary and Patti, he wanders through the action to no discernible purpose. A lengthy scene in Act III, featuring him dancing on the beach, could easily be cut. As Tater's name suggests, LeFranc isn't entirely immune to cutesiness for its own sake. Even material as contemplative as this would benefit from a general tightening-up of its structure.

Still, Jessica Pabst's costumes show her deep understanding of these characters and how they dress; Matt Frey's lighting creates some lovely, melancholy sidelighting effects when the action moves to the beach; and Leon Rothenberg's sound design mixes the sound of an old-fashioned bolero with such key effects as a barking dog, a howling coyote, and the rush of the surf.

And you have to admire LeFranc's skill at spinning a kind of philosophical wonder, mixed with a touch of existential dread, out of the kind of empty chatter that so many people indulge over drinks and snacks. As it happens, Rancho Viejo isn't so much a place as a state of mind -- and not an entirely happy one at that. -- David Barbour