Theatre in Review: If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet (Roundabout Theatre Company/Laura Pels Theatre)There were two questions buzzing around the theatre community during previews of If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, so let's get them out of the way: How is Jake Gyllenhaal? The noted young leading man of film, making his New York theatre debut, is just fine, thank you. As Terry, a boozy, heartbroken drifter intruding on his brother's family and upsetting their fragile ecology, he makes a most attractive bull in a china shop. With an incredibly foul mouth, a penchant for inappropriate intimacies, and an unfortunate knack for speaking the truth at exactly the wrong moment, he is both a sad sack and a minor league agent provocateur. Being named supervisor (for two weeks) for his troubled niece -- a choice that pleases nobody -- he assures her worried parents that they're "not going to find her snorting coke off her skating board." Taking her to a museum, he knocks over one of the exhibits. Learning that the girl, who is 15, overweight, and conspicuously lacking in friends, is about to go on her first date, he fills her full of horror stories about men and hands her a condom. Terry, whose main interests in life are drifting, drinking beer, and mooning over the girl who got away, not only has no filters, he's a walking pile of nerve endings, and Gyllenhaal captures him down to the last nervous tic. (He has a spot-on British accent, too.) As for the show's other talking point, Beowulf Boritt's set design, it's certainly one of a kind, but it isn't a gimmick. When the audience enters the theatre, a rain shower is falling from the proscenium arch into a downstage gutter; by curtain time, it is filled with water. At the center of the stage is a pile of furniture. Each new scene begins with one or more actors pulling out chairs, a table, a television, or a refrigerator -- whatever the scene requires. When the furniture is no longer needed, the actors ruthlessly chuck it; some pieces end up floating in the downstage lake. Later on, the entire stage is flooded, forcing the actors to slosh around in water up to their ankles. All this precipitation is linked to the play's theme. If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet is the story of a family that, for several reasons, is coming apart. For openers, George, the patriarch, is a scientist so obsessed with climate change that he has nothing left to give to his overworked wife and painfully unhappy daughter. Convinced that governments are helpless to solve the problem, he has decided to take the issue to the people, writing a book titled How Green Is Your Tomato: The Carbon Footprint of Practically Everything. (The published work is deeply informative -- a single cheeseburger is revealed to release stunning amounts of carbon into the atmosphere -- and is just as deeply paralyzing. Instead of rousing readers to action, it causes them to quietly await their imminent doom.) As the play makes clear, global warming is a clear and present danger; even as George fights for his family, the waters are rising. In any case, Gyllenhaal is not the only talent making his New York debut. Nick Payne, the author, who has had several acclaimed works staged in the UK, has a knack for filling the stage with likeable, if deeply messed up, people. George's marriage to Fiona is falling apart, as she buckles under the strain of her teaching job, raising a trouble-prone adolescent, and coping with a mother who is slowly retreating into the fog of dementia. (When George tries to make things better, proposing a family vacation in Florida, he buys airplane tickets for Fiona and Anna, their daughter, then books passage on a ship for himself; his conscience will not allow him to get on a carbon-spewing airplane.) Meanwhile, Anna faces the nightmarish teen-age trifecta of being fat, unpopular, and a student at a school where her mother is on the faculty. (When we first meet her, she has been suspended for head-butting another student; only later do we learn that the mean girl had called Fiona an unprintable word beginning with a C.) And, of course, there's Terry, with the best of intentions throwing salt on everybody's wounds. Payne draws his characters with warmth (but no sentimentality), casting a bright light on their terrible flaws without judging them too harshly; as a result, we find ourselves caring terribly about what happens to them. Another new face is Michael Longhurst, the director, who has a nice touch for original staging ideas and a sure hand with actors. The latter shows up in the nervous half-embrace of brothers who don't know if they're really happy to see each other, in an argument that quickly escalates into an exchange of savage truths ("What's the point of saving the planet if you can't save your fucking family?"), and an attempted suicide that could have been grossly exploitative but is instead handled with heartbreaking tact. Brían F. O'Byrne captures the social awkwardness behind George's self-absorption, letting us see that he is really the high-performing version of Terry. Michelle Gomez has a way with a withering line as Fiona; informing George that their attempt at growing local produce has gone awry, she says, "The only tomatoes we have look like tiny green testicles." And Annie Funke makes a stunning impression as Anna, who must endure taunts, rotten eggs, and a sexual assault in addition to watching her family come unglued; underneath her prickly exterior beats a heart that desperately craves love and attention. Besides's Boritt's scenery, there is also fine work from a collection of familiar faces, including Natasha Katz (lighting), Susan Hilferty (costumes), and Obidiah Eaves (original music and sound). In addition to being a funny and touching piece of writing,If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet offers us a collection of promissory notes from a playwright, director, and leading man who, I certainly hope, will come back again and again.--David Barbour 
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