Theatre in Review: Knickerbocker (The Public Theater)

	Alexander Chaplin and Mia Barron. Photo: Carol Rosegg

"Are you ready?" These are the first words spoken in Knickerbocker, and not for the last time. They are spoken by Jerry, the protagonist, who, in six months or so, will become a father. "Well, if you don't feel ready, how do you think he feels?" responds his wife, Pauline, pointing to her belly. It's the first of many amusing and telling little skirmishes between characters in Jonathan Marc Sherman's perceptive comedy, as he slowly makes his way toward an understanding of what it means to be a parent.

Knickerbocker is uninterested in treating its subject matter with either frat-boy levity or weepy sentimentality; that's the Hollywood approach. Instead, Sherman, seemingly aware that what is happening to Jerry is both momentous and a little bit banal, approaches the topic sideways. He places Jerry in his favorite banquette in the Greenwich Village restaurant of the title, and puts him through a series of encounters with friends, relatives, and exes; each of them is filled with little epiphanies that, cumulatively, have the effect of making you see the world through Jerry's newly awestruck eyes.

Pauline, for example, is the practical type. When, in a discussion of possible baby names, "Titus" is floated, she responds, "If he's gonna be named for a Shakespearean character, perhaps not the one who serves people for dinner, maybe, don't you think?" Jerry's best friend, the over-evolved Melvin, has been to the delivery room, only to smugly report back that the experience is indescribable. "It's like alchemy," he says, "and, when they're born, in an instant, your depression is turned into anxiety. Forever. You worry all the time." His other best friend, Chester, a case of arrested development with a taste for pot and massage parlors, announces that Jerry's marriage is a mistake and should be ended posthaste. "I know. I should have said something earlier," he admits. When Jerry describes his child as "impending," Chester adds, "As in impending doom?"

And so it goes; as everyone weighs in with his or her point of view, we begin to understand the looming responsibility Jerry feels for another human life. It's not that he's in a panic or anything, mind you, but, as he says, "I picture this little magistrate sitting there judging you constantly, absorbing everything, but not letting you know what they think of how you're doing until they're, like, going through puberty and screaming at you."

For all of its quietly pointed wit and clear-eyed wisdom, Knickerbocker is a conversation piece, and, as Jerry duels, in friendly fashion, with each new interlocutor, you may begin to wish that Sherman had been more attentive to investing his piece with some dramatic conflict. There are longueurs, and not all of the author's attempts at humor come off. But the piece never bores, and, as it unfolds, it touches on some surprisingly deep feelings. This is especially true in the next-to-last scene, featuring Jerry's father, Raymond. Here we see a bond that has survived all tests, beginning with the loss of Jerry's mother to madness and an early death. Clearly Raymond was an imperfect father -- among other things, he tried to foist a set of condoms on his prepubescent son before sending him to sleepaway camp ("I wanted you to be well-rounded," is his entirely lame explanation.") -- but the affection between father and son is real, as is often the case between survivors of terrible events.

Even the weaker passages of Knickerbocker benefit from the excellent cast and the acute and tightly focused direction of Pippin Parker. Alexander Chaplin, who remains on stage for the duration of the play, is nothing less than remarkable as Jerry, building a carefully detailed portrait of a no-longer-young man who is learning to embrace responsibility even as it dawns on him that his is a thoroughly ordinary life. Mia Barron spars wittily with him as Pauline, and between them, they offer a vividly lifelike portrait of the shared humors and cloaked hostilities that are part of any married couple's exchanges.

There is also fine work from Ben Shenkman, both charming and a tiny bit infuriating as Melvin; Zak Orthas Chester, a sorrowful, shaggy mess of a boy/man; and Christina Kirk as Jerry's amusingly controlling, slightly scary ex-girlfriend. ("You're lucky I let you have a wife," she informs him, not entirely jokingly.) Best of all is the irreplaceable Bob Dishy as Raymond, knocking off one-liners as only he can ("You don't graduate from therapy. You leave them or they die.") and eloquently expressing the inseparable pains and pleasures of having a son ("It absolutely feels like an obligation, and I have enjoyed it more than anything in the world").

Peter Ksander's simple setting -- a banquette, an upstage wall, and some carpeting -- nevertheless evokes the real Knickerbocker restaurant, and Jeff Croiter's lighting has an uncanny way of suggesting different times of day. Less effective are Shawn Duan's projections, which have a rather washed out, indistinct feeling. Gabriel Berry's costumes nail the essence of each character. Walter Trarbach's sound design provides solid reinforcement for Mark Parenti's charming incidental music.

It all adds up to a surprisingly moving portrait of an everyday sort of fellow standing on the brink of one of life's great adventures. By the way, that question ("Are you ready?") is answered in the play's final moments. I won't tell you the answer, but I will tell you that it might bring tears to your eyes.--David Barbour