Theatre in Review: The Madrid (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center)

	Edie Falco as Martha Photo: Joan Marcus

Why would you hire an actress of Edie Falco's caliber to star in a play and then banish her to the wings? A strange question, I know, but that's exactly what happened with The Madrid, a confused work receiving a production that serves neither the play nor the leading lady.

The Madrid play begins on an amusing note, with Martha (Falco), a kindergarten teacher, reviewing the drawings her children have made of their families and offering bits of kindly commentary. Without warning, however, she takes off, leaving one of her little charges in her place. The sight of six-year-old Brooke Ashley Laine seated at the head of the class, looking uncomfortable in Falco's sweater and wondering aloud what happens next, is both amusing and unsettling. It's a perfect teaser; right off the bat, we're eager to know who Martha is and why she suddenly took flight.

Instead, Martha drops out of the action for a good 20 minutes while Liz Flahive, the playwright, provides an en masse introduction of the supporting characters. They include Sarah, Martha's daughter, a recent college graduate, who has come home to see her father through this crisis; Becca and Danny, the overinvolved neighbors; John, Martha's husband, who reacts to her disappearance by selling off all their furniture; and Rose, Martha's vinegary mother, who may or may not be dotty but who is definitely a menace behind the wheel of the car. And don't ask her about Martha: "You leave your family when you die, and that is all," she says, brooking no further conversation on the topic.

After all of them have had an extended period of conversation, Martha shows up at the Starbucks where Sarah works, bearing a birthday present. ("I didn't know Shania Twain had her own fragrance," Sarah says, baffled.) Mother and daughter end up at the hotel of the title, where Martha is now living. "Dump" is too kind a word for this place, with its dirt-stained walls and minimal furniture. ("It smells like old water," Sarah remarks in dismay.) While Sarah is staring, aghast, at her surroundings, Martha lays down some ground rules: They can be friends -- in fact, Martha would prefer it -- but Sarah may not disclose any information about Martha's whereabouts to anyone, not even John. Angry, Sarah demands a price for her silence. Martha produces a strongbox, from which she extracts $10,000 in cash.

The rest of The Madrid features scenes of Sarah, on the payroll as it were, "dating" her mom, alternating with lengthy, seemingly unrelated interludes involving the other characters. Sarah has a brief flirtation with Danny, whose attraction to younger women has strained his marriage considerably; Rose appears to complain comically about old age and Martha's willful nature. John spends his time knocking around his nearly empty house, thinking about logging on to Match.com. We are also introduced to Dylan, son of Danny and Rebecca, who suffers from a syndrome that results in painful growth spurts. When Martha does show up, she has little or nothing to say for herself; even when she's a presence, she's an absence.

All of which adds up to a disjointed, one-note drama. The script keeps trying to frame Martha as someone who has made a painful, probably necessary, decision to preserve her selfhood; no thought is given to the rage and narcissism that may be part of her motivations. Certainly, Martha shows not the slightest concern for Sarah's predicament, having to lie to her father to see her mother. And when Rose is hurt in an accident and Sarah, who has been drinking, begs Martha to drive her to the hospital, the latter's reply ("I need to be here right now") speaks volumes about her selfishness. It doesn't help that Falco delivers most of her lines in the same Romper-Room cadence she used with her five-year-olds.

We're also asked to believe that Martha has tried to abandon the family several times before -- once running off to a commune before being retrieved by Rose -- a fact that has escaped Sarah's notice altogether. Flahive never gets around to indicating what makes family life so abhorrent to Martha, or why John has proved to be so unsatisfactory as a husband.

On reflection, it seems pretty clear that Sarah is the true protagonist of The Madrid; she is in nearly every scene and the action, such as it is, traces her growing, if halting, independence from her parents. But the casting of Falco and the focus on Martha confuses the issue; the play might work better if she was seen as one of many characters who cause stress for Sarah. Even so, the writing isn't nearly incisive enough to make us care about these sad, addled people.

Under Leigh Silverman's direction, the cast does what it can with its underdeveloped roles. Phoebe Strole lends plenty of charm to the role of Sarah, who otherwise might seem impossibly whiny. Heidi Schreck and Darren Goldstein do what they can with Sarah and Danny, and Seth Clayton is an amusing bundle of teenaged mannerisms as the utterly superfluous Dylan. As John, John Ellison Conlee has a character almost as thinly drawn as Martha. Frances Sternhagen, as Rose, does wonders with her cranky-old-lady lines. And Falco is content to maintain a single note as Martha throughout.

The production is surprisingly elaborate for a domestic drama. David Zinn's set design has three basic looks: 1) the empty living room, sitting in a red-brick surround, which functions as a unit set, accommodating scenes in other locations; 2) Martha's epically squalid apartment; and 3) John's yard sale, with piles of furniture as far as the eye can see. All of this is lit with his usual skill by Jeff Croiter. Emily Rebholz dresses the characters in various types of casual daywear. Jill BC Du Boff's sound design provides reinforcement for Tom Kitt's original music; she also contributes to an amusing scene in which Martha, trying to silence a noisy neighbor, tries to drown out his salsa music with the aid of two boom boxes.

The Madrid ends at the yard sale with a family reunion of sorts, although how long it will last is anybody's guess; Sarah, exhausted by events, crawls into her parents' bed for a nap. Never mind that the bed is in the front yard. This is one of those plays where grief makes people act in quirky, kooky ways that are meant to be equally sad and charming. Edie Falco is a great actress, but not even she cannot make Martha into an interesting or sympathetic person.--David Barbour