Theatre in Review: Regrets (Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage I)

Matt Charman is a very imaginative playwright -- possibly too imaginative at times. In Regrets, he asks the audience to accept a great many things, seemingly unaware that the smart playwright doles out his implausibilities sparingly, lest he lose their trust.

Regrets is set in a Nevada divorce ranch, in 1954. For you young 'uns out there, before the days of no-fault divorce, it was common practice for soon-to-be ex-spouses to move to Nevada, a state that took a rather laissez-faire approach to marriage and divorce. All you had to do was live there six weeks in order to establish residency, then pop into your local courthouse, claim mental cruelty, and voila!, you were as free as a bird. Reno was the divorce capital of America, so much so that Walter Winchell coined the term "getting Reno-vated" for the process. (See George Cukor's film The Women for the last word on this once-popular social ritual.)

And, indeed, given the social realities of the era, the vast majority of those who headed to Nevada were women, a practice that left their husbands gainfully employed, earning those forthcoming alimony payments. Charman, however, has set his play in a divorce motel occupied only by men. It's a jarring premise at first, but, as the first act unfolds and he teases out the details of each man's breakup, it becomes a little easier to swallow. The unhappy inhabitants include Gerald, an ex-Navy man whose Filipino wife has deserted him; Alvin, a pet-shop proprietor who neglected his spouse; and Ben, a World War II vet who never readjusted to home life. Unlike the others, who are there for their six weeks, Ben has become a fixture at the motel, along with the campfire in front of the cabins and the sheets that get changed every five days -- three if you pay extra. (That's about it for comfort in this godforsaken place, which looks like one of the seedier "motor courts" of the era.) They're a cranky, lonely lot, cooking inedible meals for each other and passing their time with card games and quizzes; for a few minutes, I wondered if Charman didn't have in mind a three-way version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, a melancholy comedy in which divorced men act out the reasons for their failed marriages.

Then the author throws a curveball with the appearance of Caleb, a young man from Los Angeles. Caleb says he is 21, but soon admits that 18 is nearer the mark. Can he really be getting a divorce so soon? If not, why is he there? "A boy like that out here makes me uneasy," says Ben, the unofficial leader of the pack, and the others agree. The rest of Act I consists of Caleb's fencing with the others -- especially Ben -- trying to answer their questions without giving anything away. He admits to being an apprentice electrician at one of the studios, but not much more; there are vague allusions to unnamed friends. Then, just before the intermission, an investigator shows up, looking for Caleb; unnervingly, he knows a great deal about everyone at the motel. Even more unnervingly, he says he is from the HUAC.

Thus, what starts out as a reasonably observant study of middle-aged male angst in the Eisenhower era turns into a political melodrama marked by a faint, but persistent, lack of conviction. Once again, we're being asked to take a plot development strictly on faith -- that Caleb, while not old enough to vote, has managed to run afoul of both the Hollywood star system and the blacklist, which is quite an accomplishment for an adolescent who occupies the lowest rung at his studio. The coup de grace comes at the climax, when everyone bands together to make a statement that is just about impossible to accept, given everything we have been told about these characters.

Charman is British, and much of Regrets plays like the work of a writer who has read up on his subject without becoming familiar enough with it to recreate it in a thoroughly believable manner. Some reviewers have dismissed it as an old-fashioned well-made play; it is definitely old-fashioned, but the well-made part is subject to debate; the cabins on Rachel Hauck's atmospheric set look far better constructed.

That Regrets remains so watchable is due to the contributions of a solid cast under the expert directorial eye of Carolyn Cantor, who orchestrates the action with subtlety and skill. "So what do you all do?" asks Caleb, by way of making conversation, and the blank, slightly disturbed stares he gets from the others tell you all you need to know about their lowered expectations. A revelation from Alvin about the night, during the Depression, that his father fed a parrot from the shop to his family, is both funny and tragic. So is Alvin's admission, when asked about any past legal transgressions, that "I tore up a paper ballot once." There's a beautifully staged birthday party that ends in bitterness and fisticuffs. And most of Act II is plausibly suffused with the quiet fear that seems to have been a fact of life in the McCarthy era.

Cantor has chosen her cast well. The role of Ben -- the wounded outsider who finally makes a stand -- is a cliché through and through, but Brian Hutchinson invests him with a real pain that goes beyond the permanently stunned look on his face and the leg that drags behind him whenever he walks. Richard Topol's Alvin is a kind of uber-nerd, who has lost his way in the world; the scene in which a longed-for letter arrives from his wife, bearing crushing news, is a quiet study in heartbreak. Alexis Bledel is likable as Chrissie, the local girl who charges for her services, which she tactfully refers to as "haircuts." And the always-welcome Adriane Lenox brings a daunting don't-mess-with-me quality to the role of Mrs. Duke, who runs the motel like the tightest of ships. ("Do you want to make a complaint?" she asks one of her tenants, and, given her tone, a man would be insane to say anything further.) As Caleb, Ansel Elgort is asked to play a cipher for two hours; he's too inexperienced to make his character truly compelling, but he's an attractive and mysterious presence nonetheless. Lucas Caleb Rooney makes Gerald into something more than a drunken lout, especially in the scene in which he haplessly proposes to Chrissie.

Ben Stanton lights Hauck's setting --a trio of cabins -- with a series of beautiful sunset looks that add to the feeling of isolation and loss. Ilona Somogyi's costumes are full of nice period touches. Jill BC DuBoff's sound design provides an evocative playlist of period tunes, including "Rags to Riches," "Istanbul," and some lovely contributions by Perry Como, along with a series of ambient effects that include cicadas and the rumble of an airplane overhead.

Regrets is a likeable play, filled with characters whose sorrows are easily-recognizable; it's never dull, but, as a piece of drama, it's a little too subject to its author's whims. --David Barbour