Theatre in Review: Too Much, Too Much, Too Many (Roundabout Underground)Grief does strange things to people, but in Too Much, Too Much, Too Many, the characters' form of mourning is often distressingly cute. The elderly James, who has been slipping into dementia, has died, and his widow, Rose, has retired to her bedroom, from which she refuses to leave. This makes life difficult for Emma, their thirty-something daughter, who, when not knocking on the bedroom door, begging Rose to come out, is stuck in the kitchen making muffins using Rose's recipe. Even the muffins are failures, as Rose refuses to divulge a key ingredient. Already, Meghan Kennedy's play rings false; we are asked to believe that Rose has been in her bedroom for six months, with no indication of how she is getting food or drink, although, as played by the lovely Phyllis Somerville, she appears to be in the ruddiest of health. One wonders if a maid and hairdresser aren't sneaking in through the window, as the room is neat as a pin and Rose is always perfectly dressed and coiffed; she may be ravaged by sorrow, but she looks like she has spent all that time at a spa. Her one demand is that Emma repeatedly tell her the circumstances of James' death. Emma obliges, saying the same thing each time: "They pulled him out real slow. He had seaweed in his hair. His shirt was still tucked in. Belt was still tight. His face was serene. Eyes were open, as if they saw something right out ahead of him. (Pause) And clutched in his hand was a small, wooden bird. Mr. Shaw said he never seen anything like it, a man passing but still holding on to something." Rose's only comment, inevitably, is, "Again." Dropping into this deadlocked situation from the local church is Pastor Hidge. He begins by sitting in the hall outside Rose's room, reading to her from scripture. This gets no response. They then progress to playing Go Fish, slipping cards under the door. (This allows Rose to cheat without fear of detection.) Meanwhile, the sexual tension between Emma and Hidge is leading to plenty of pregnant pauses in the kitchen. "I don't ... know you," Emma protests. "Do you want to?" he asks. They kiss. That last exchange goes to the heart of Too Much, Too Much, Too Many's problems. Kennedy is big on cute conceits like Hidge and Rose pretending to dance together on opposite sides of the door. But her characters are so thinly conceived that they barely seem to exist. We know nothing about Emma's life -- if she has any job, friends, or interests. She has siblings, but they don't figure in the story at all, for reasons that are never made clear. We have so little sense of Rose's marriage to James that her singular way of mourning merely seems peculiar; in any case, she seems to be having a high old time in that bedroom. Hidge is similarly a cipher -- "He has loss in his voice," says Rose, in an all-too-typical line -- until his big secret is spilled. That's when you realize that this is one of those plays where everyone has a dark tragedy in his or her past that must be aired before life can go on. The director, Sheryl Kaller, does her best, but it's hard to get much momentum going when the script is constructed out of tiny scenes that don't build on each other and often end in banalities. As Emma and Hidge, Rebecca Henderson and Luke Kirby seem hemmed in by their stilted, soap-opera dialogue and scenes that are riddled with pauses. Somerville, as always, is a delight, even if her character makes no sense, and as James, James Rebhorn gives a fine account of a man slipping into dementia. Kaller has also made sure that Too Much, Too Much, Too Many has a fine physical production. Wilson Chin's set, a kitchen, hallway, and bedroom, is an evocatively detailed creation. It appears to be set somewhere in the American Southwest, an impression reinforced by a beautiful, if slightly abstract, backdrop that suggests the desert. This backdrop is repeatedly transformed by the lighting designer, Zach Blane, in a series of lovely wipe effects; his fluid transitions also help ameliorate the script's choppy construction. Jess Goldstein's costumes are typically observant; note how Hidge wears a brown belt with his all-black clerical outfit, a clear sign that he is indifferent to fashion; Goldstein also supplies a filmy chiffon dress that makes Somerville look great. The sound design, by Broken Chord, includes a plentiful supply of swing music. In the final analysis, however, the sorrow expressed in Kennedy's play feels more like a writerly conceit than anything connected to reality. And the characters have so little to them it is impossible to care what happens to them. This is one case when Too Much is really not enough. -- David Barbour 
|
