Theatre in Review: The Old Boy (Keen Company/Theatre Row)"My God, does anyone ever let go of this place?" Not in The Old Boy, as a visit to his old prep school forces the title character to confront the legacy of pain he left behind. Seeing the new Keen Company production, it's difficult to let go of the memory of the play's 1991 premiere. At the time, The Old Boy was remarkably moving, not least because A. R. Gurney, the bard of America's upper classes, had stopped to consider what damage had been done to gay people forced to conform to the standards of churches, states, and country clubs in the mid-20th century. (This was still, by and large, a topic for gay playwrights only.) The current revival reminds one how carefully Gurney's scripts must be handled if they are to be effective. The Old Boy begins in the early '90s, with the arrival of Sam at the prep school where he once ruled the roost. Now a super-connected politician -- his eye is currently on the governor's office -- he has progressed from being an insider at school to an insider in Washington. He is scheduled to make the commencement address; in addition, Sam is asked by the vice-rector to announce a gift to the school -- a new indoor tennis court -- to be made by Harriet, the mother of Sam's late friend, Perry. Perry died young, under circumstances that nobody really wants to discuss, and Sam seems oddly detached from his friend's memory. "No boy leaves the school unimproved," asserts Dexter, the vice-rector. These words must sound strange to Sam, who, despite his successful career, is a slightly hollow figure who can't sustain a marriage; an oddly edgy cocktail hour, rife with subtext, shared with Harriet and Alison, Perry's widow, signals that there's more going on than we know. This cues the flashbacks, which reveal how Harriet commandeered Sam to be Perry's "old boy," assigned to show him the ropes at his new school. Perry is the type people called "sensitive" in the 1960s, a term that usually meant so much more; in his case, it means a preference for Wagner and school plays, where he worryingly enjoys playing the female leads in Shakespeare. Harriet wants Sam to make Perry over into a tennis-loving extrovert with a firm handshake. Sam does his best, but all he does is instill in the young man a crippling sense of shame, which will ultimately have tragic consequences. The Old Boy is a compact piece of work, packing a great deal of information in its 90-minute running time; as is usually the case with Gurney, the drama happens between the lines, and what is needed are actors who can tap into the darker emotions buried in each polite exchange. In Jonathan Silverstein's production, only Laura Esterman, a superb Harriet, fills the bill. Esterman is charmingly overbearing or overbearingly charming (take your pick); she doesn't so much enter a room as take control of it, ready to bully anyone in her way with a smile and a smart remark. Bitterly divorced from a man who preferred the louche life of Greenwich Village, she simply waves away any indication that Perry might not be the son of her dreams. Challenge her, however, and you will feel her unchecked rage. This is another remarkable performance from this fine actress. There's also fine work from Tom Riis Farrell, as Dexter, who, in lieu of a personal life, "married the school," and only now is beginning to realize what that decision cost him. Sam, however, is undergoing a profound crisis underneath that well-practiced smile, and Peter Rini is mostly stays on the character's surface, hinting at darker emotions without really evoking them. His confrontation with Alison (played rather skittishly by Marsha Dietlein Bennett), who has a number of scores to settle, is undermined by Silverstein's rather fidgety direction; a scene that should be a wrenching confrontation lacks the necessary focus. Most damagingly, the play's climactic memory scene -- in which Perry (Chris Dwan, who looks a little like the young Anthony Perkins) reveals his true feelings to Sam, only to be rebuffed -- is bereft of its underlying heartbreak. If we don't feel that Perry is thoroughly crushed and that Sam has at least a bit of a sense of what he is doing, the scene will fall flat, which it pretty much does here. As a result, The Old Boy comes off as an overly facile piece of construction designed to give Sam his comeuppance in rather too-neat a fashion. The production also exposes the play's biggest weakness -- that Perry isn't a fully realized character, just a figure who exists to prick Sam's conscience. Given the right handling, these problems can be managed, but, overall, the company shows little facility with the Gurney style. The rest of the production is reasonably well done. Steven C. Kemp's set, dominated by portraits of past headmasters, has the right atmosphere, even if it seems somewhat sparsely furnished. Josh Bradford's lighting is nicely understated. Jennifer's Paar's costumes include some chic Chanel-style outfits for Harriet. The sound design by M. Florian Staab provides scene-setting effects (the tolling of bells, a baseball game broadcast) and reinforcement for Ryan Rumery's original music. Has time merely had its way with The Old Boy? An acquaintance recently posited the 20-year rule, which states that if a play one loved still works two decades hence, then it is a work of quality. In this case, the jury is still out. This production earns a gentleman's C, but the memory of that 1991 staging lingers; I believe that, in the right hands, The Old Boy can still pack a punch.--David Barbour 
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