Theatre in Review: Amy and the Orphans (Roundabout Theatre Company)Amy and the Orphans is so loaded with stellar performances that it might be a little while before you notice what a cunning trap the playwright, Lindsey Ferrentino, has laid. First up are Mark Blum and Debra Monk as hilariously woebegone siblings who, after years of drift, are thrown together for their father's funeral. Blum is Jacob, currently of California -- it was the farthest he could get from his native Long Island -- where he practices an aggressively healthy lifestyle and has embraced Christianity. A rather weathered-looking sixty, he has only recently gotten braces on his teeth. "I have quite a serious jaw misalignment," he all but shouts, ducking when Maggie, undone with mirth, takes a smartphone photo of his dental work. Maggie, a real estate agent from Chicago, is in a perpetual state of disarray; her coiffure calls to mind a standard poodle left out in the rain. When not indulging in operatic expressions of grief ("We're orphans!"), she warns Jacob not to bomb their dad's Jewish funeral with any tributes to Jesus, as he did when their mother passed away. "You kept reading completely irrelevant scripture," she says, accusingly. "'Cause I couldn't find my place. It was a lot of pressure," he says, shuddering at the recollection. "And let me be the first to say no one's mistaking that face for a gentile's," Maggie adds. Blum and Monk turn their characters' infinite supply of resentments and regrets into pure vaudeville; you could make a perfectly delightful evening of them alone. They are more than matched by Jamie Brewer, as their younger sister, Amy, who has Down syndrome. Despite Maggie's strenuous protestations, Amy, who lives in a group home and has a job in a movie theatre, is little better than a stranger. (The siblings see her at holidays; Maggie rationalizes that Amy doesn't like to talk on the phone, but this is clearly a dodge.) Brewer, who herself has Down syndrome, brilliantly evokes a woman who, whatever her limitations, never reached her full potential, for reasons that will become devastatingly clear. With faultless timing, Brewer realizes Amy's distinctive style of communication, a mix of jokes and dialogue from her favorite movies, playing off Maggie and Jacob's lines and overriding their dialogue with a child's willfulness; she also has an uncanny way of suggesting deeper emotions churning under her seemingly simple exterior. Her climactic speech, a collage that begins with A Streetcar Named Desire and ends with On the Waterfront, is a tour de force that has the audience firmly in the palm of her hand. Adding to this bounty is Vanessa Aspillaga as Kathy, Amy's scathingly honest, staggeringly foul-mouthed, and very pregnant caretaker. Every time she opens her mouth, she detonates another load of verbal TNT, delivering one laugh after another without pausing to take a breath. In a play already filled with problematic sibling relationships, Aspillaga stops the show with Kathy's monologues about her "dumbass boyfriend's" sisters, a set piece that appears to be a case of direct address until the final line, which lands with a riotous wallop. In another key altogether, Diane Davis and Josh McDermitt as a young married couple in therapy, prove to be expert skirmishers, taking part in futile trust exercises that detonate a series of revelations leavened with tears, accusations, the loss of a few pieces of clothing, and a sudden, wrenching ultimatum. Exactly what this young couple has to do with Amy and her orphaned siblings is not clear for a long time; the moment I guessed the connection was accompanied by a sharp intake of air. And I wasn't alone: It's the realization of how cunningly Ferrentino has been playing us, luring us into going along for the ride with her spiky crew and letting them sneak up on our affections before delivering a haymaker of a revelation. It's a family secret that has been in plain sight for decades -- and that neither Jacob nor Maggie ever grasped. It raises new questions about their characters and their view of their collective past. In a single gesture, a rather raucous, wisecracking comedy is turned into the poignant account of one family's unraveling. Amy and the Orphans is a play loaded with potential pitfalls -- excessive vulgarity and moist sentimentality being only two among many -- but Scott Ellis' inventive, observant direction keeps everything on track. He provides any number of memorable moments: Jacob, Maggie, Amy, and Kathy sitting in a car, each holding a Slim Jim; all four stepping, almost fearfully, into the late father's living room; the quartet squeezed into a banquette in a Burger King, Amy standing guard on her French fries. He also makes the most of a riotous memorial service, held in a Chinese restaurant, for which Maggie has grossly overestimated the number of attendees, delivering her eulogy via a karaoke machine. Ellis has also obtained from his design team contributions that are perfectly in sync with the script's funny-sad tone. Rachel Hauck's set, which deploys a few set pieces -- tables, a bed, a car body -- across a stage constantly reshaped by sliding panels glowing in a variety of colors -- is a smart concept that keeps the action moving at the right clip. It's an approach that wouldn't have worked without the expert collaboration of the lighting designer, Kenneth Posner. Alejo Vietti's costumes are wittily attuned to each character, especially Maggie's distrait looks, which are aided by Charles G. LaPointe's wig designs. One of the script's few formulaic turns is when Amy runs away from the others and is found wandering in traffic, a moment made terrifying by John Gromada's sound design. Roundabout also produced Ferrentino's previous work, Ugly Lies the Bone, a scalding drama about a physically scarred war vet. Amy and the Orphans is something else altogether, suggesting that she is a writer with many more surprises in store for us. Based on these two works, I can't wait for her to come around again. -- David Barbour 
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