Theatre in Review: Kin (Playwrights Horizons)

	Photo credit: Joan Marcus

Kin focuses on the long-term romantic relationship of a couple named Anna and Sean -- but, except for a brief and minor encounter at the halfway point, we never see them together until nearly the end of Bathsheba Doran's odd, highly original, and thoroughly beguiling new work. Instead, the playwright focuses on Anna and Sean's friends and family -- giving us a sideways view of the lovers' slow, sometimes halting, progress toward the altar, while showing how their decision to be together sends ripples of change through the lives of their extended families.

If this sounds like some kind of theatrical chick-lit, or the premise for a Nora Ephron or Nancy Meyer picture yet to be made, rest assured that Doran is a connoisseur of the many ways that people can make themselves unhappy, a point of view that neatly keeps any sentimentality at bay. She kicks off the action on an uproarious note as Anna, a graduate student at Columbia, sits in silence while her boyfriend, Simon (also her professor), breaks up with her, displaying his virtuoso way with self-aggrandizing clichés. "I don't know what I'm looking for but I know it's not you," he informs her, straining to make a virtue of honesty. Desperate for a little sympathy, he follows that remark with, "I just want someone I can talk to, you know? And fuck." Switching gears, he tries to point out that her attraction for him is, in all likelihood, an unhealthy reaction to her father's death. "My father's still alive," she coolly responds. "Oh. Then I'm confusing you with someone else," he mumbles.

Sean, an Irish immigrant who works in New York as a personal trainer, has plenty of troubles of his own. Even if he lives a continent away from his mother, Linda, he still feels burdened by her crushing misery. As a young woman, Linda suffered a trauma -- the exact details of which aren't revealed until late in the play -- that destroyed her marriage, alienated her from the Catholic Church, and left her afraid to leave the house. Now she's a boozy recluse, connected to the world only through the telephone. "We all have the potential for change," Sean tells her wearily, during another marathon call. Linda, practically snorting with disgust, snaps, "Says who? Where are you getting this stuff?" When he offers to share a self-help book with her, she says, dismissively, "You've been living in America too long."

Anna and Sean get together, and, little by little, we learn about their struggle toward intimacy. She is fed up with her doctoral thesis, which bears the not-very-glamorous title of Keats' Punctuation. (As we learn at her publishing party, success only comes when she renames it The Grammar of Love: Keats and Punctuation.) He frets about them living together and daydreams about an old girlfriend. But most of the time, the foreground is occupied by all the others in their orbit. On Anna's side that includes Helena, a fantastically needy actress, whose life's pursuit is making sure that the world knows how deeply she suffers. (When we first meet her, she is clutching the body of her significant other, her dog Zoe, who has just passed away.) Also in the mix is Anna's father, Adam, an Army officer who disapproves of New York, academia, and anything else to do with Anna's life. Sean's side includes his Uncle Max, who frets that he should have been a father to Sean, and who is most certainly sick of propping up Linda. And there's Rachel, the girl who got away, who, every time Sean gets misty about their mutual past, hastens to remind him that she was suicidal and an alcoholic. Sean is surprised to hear that Rachel has a husband named Devrak. "I didn't know there were Indian people in Maine," he says. "Did you ever seriously think about it?" she wonders.

As narrative strategies go, this sounds like a great idea for a book and a terrible notion for a play. But Doran manages to pack each scene with little revelations and surprises that create the feeling of dramatic movement, and her dialogue is a pleasure. She's particularly good at presenting situations without comment. When Anna reads a section of a diary belonging to her mother-- who died young -- depicting a particularly bleak portion of her marriage, she lashes out at Adam, unaware that he is currently in love with a woman named Kay, who is at death's door. When Sean and Anna finally decide to tie the knot, they unknowingly choose to do it near the very spot where Linda had her life-paralyzing trauma. Helena, feeling abandoned by Anna, takes up various New Age practices, leading to a riotous encounter in the forest with a hunter and the best stage bear you've ever seen this side of The Winter's Tale. It all climaxes in a comically besieged wedding ceremony that nevertheless communicates a feeling of grace.

Throughout the script, Doran's special gift is finding hilarity in her characters' quirks while never losing sight of the fact that their problems are rooted in real tragedies. Sam Gold, who has wrought miracles with the plays of Annie Baker, is exactly the right director here, and he once again gets a set of pitch-perfect performances from a gifted cast. Kristen Bush's self-possession and brisk manner ensure that we can like Anna without ever having to feel sorry for her. Similarly, Patch Darragh conveys Sean's loneliness and insecurity without the slightest touch of mawkishness. Suzanne Bertish's Linda is compelling, even at her most self-destructive, and Bill Buell is touching as her staunch, if impatient, brother. Cotter Smith's Adam is a softer variation on the chilly father figure he played last season in Last Fall, but his scenes with Kit Flanagan, as the dying Kay, are quietly touching. Laura Heisler is the train wreck of one's nightmares as Helena, a one woman army of resentments. Matthew Rauch scores a couple of amusing cameos, as Anna's faithless lover and as that hunter who saves Helena from nature red in tooth and claw.

The production has an exceptionally interesting production design, in which Paul Steinberg, the set designer, uses a giant moveable frame and a freestanding upstage wall to create a different look for each of the play's locations. Jane Cox lights each scene with tremendous sensitivity, and she pulls off a mini-coup with her handling of the wedding scene, which unfolds in a bank of Irish fog. David Zinn's costumes clearly denote the difference between the Irish and the Americans, then outfits each character in totally appropriate choices. Matt Tierney's sound design includes some fine effects - including a rainstorm and ambient party voices -- and some moodily effective songs for the scenic transitions.

Kin is something special, a play that offers up so many small pleasures that, before long, they add up to something much more. It has all the marks of a fresh sensibility. Bathsheba Doran is probably a hard name to forget -- but you'll want to be sure to remember it, anyway.