Theatre in Review: The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin (Roundabout at Laura Pels Theatre)

	Christopher Denham and David Morse. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The problem with Tom Durnin isn't that he disappeared; it's that he is back, thinking that he can pick up where he left off, five years before. Tom, a disbarred lawyer, is a small-time version of Bernard Madoff; having ensnared his family and friends in a shady stock deal that decimated their savings, he was convicted and sent to prison. Having done the time, he expects to resume his life, as it was before everything fell apart.

Certainly, when we meet him, he has been humbled. He works as a barista in a café inside a Borders bookstore, and, as he tells his son James, he lives in a halfway house filled with addicts. "I can't sleep," he says. "The sheets smell bad. The air smells bad. People crying in their beds all night, talking to themselves. I'm scared one of these days I'm going to look at somebody the wrong way and get cut up into little pieces. You'll find me in a suitcase." While James is taking this in, Tom asks him for $2,000. James, who just gets by on a dead-end job selling medical supplies, is stunned. Tom decides to settle: He'll stay with James -- for only a month, he swears.

And so it goes, with Tom applying the same admixture of sorrow, guilt, and arm-twisting to each of the people he claims to love. Trying to return to his firm in an advisory capacity, he approaches Chris, his son-in-law and former colleague; when a little family chitchat and some friendly coaching ("Barry will say no, but if you can get Mark and Vanessa on board, Glen will say yes.") don't work, he threatens to turn state's witness, exposing fraudulent practices among the partners. Throwing an extra dash of salt on a freshly opened wound, he tells Chris, "I hired you. Don't forget that. OK? Bottom of your class, mediocre board scores, got cut from law review. Don't forget that; do me a favor. OK?"

As The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin makes clear, the unavoidable trouble with Tom is that the same moral blindness that led him to break the law ("One stupid decision," he calls it, belligerently, when it is brought up.) keeps him from realizing that his life has been permanently altered. James, who dropped out of Yale when the money disappeared, and whose marriage was destroyed in the process, sleepwalks through his life; he lives alone in a cheap tract house, nursing dreams of becoming a novelist. Tom's daughter, Annie (Chris' wife), whom we never see, is clearly consumed with rage that poisons her marriage. Karen, Tom's wife, has married again and taken up a new career as a teacher, but forgiveness is not in her curriculum.

Worse, Tom thinks that he can use the same ruthless tactics that caused his downfall to strong-arm his way back. David Morse's Tom constantly switches tactics so fluently -- he can be paternal, contrite, wheedling, and racked with rage in 60 seconds or less -- that you can only stare in fascinated horror. Watching him wear down James's resistance with a story about a long-ago fishing trip, one is reminded of the supreme skill with which Morse played the friendly pedophile in Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive. Later, skirmishing with James over access to Karen's phone number, his carapace of warmth crumbles, revealing disconcerting shards of anger and bitterness. Facing Karen, he clings pathetically to bits of happier memories. ("I kissed you in the library and you dropped your book bag. Remember? ... I held your hand, and we had a daughter. We had a son. We had an apartment in Baltimore, Karen.") Seconds later, he brutally exposes James in a lie. Told by James "You ruined people's lives," he bellows in a voice laced with fury and panic, "And I paid for it, didn't I? I did my job. I did what I was supposed to do. Now when can I have my fucking life back?"

Steven Levenson, the author of The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, has much to say about America's sour post-crash hangover. (The play is set in 2009.) His previous play, Core Values (seen just last month at Ars Nova), was a melancholy comedy with a razor-sharp ear for the clichés of life among middle managers. Here, he pursues his remorseless family saga with Javert-like vigor, placing his characters in a suburban landscape marred by unemployment, foreclosures, and credit crunches. For Tom Durnin, this is like another prison sentence: The kind of fellow who prospered when irrational exuberance reigned and money was easy, he is an alien in a world where the old tricks no longer apply.

Scott Ellis' taut, observant production captures all of this and much more, thanks to a remarkably skilled and sensitive cast. Christopher Denham's James, his carriage stuck in a permanent half-crouch, as if expecting to be slapped at any moment, his lines delivered just loud enough to be audible, his eyes nervously darting from right to left, is a vivid representative of the walking wounded. James has slipped into a habit of telling lies to avoid conflict, but, facing off with Tom, Denham uncorks James' bottled-up fury, unsparingly exposing his pain. Lisa Emery, the woman you want when the role is tough on the outside and bleeding on the inside, does not disappoint as Karen, her eyes burning with the injustice of her fate. Sarah Goldberg is touching as the scattered, skittish young thing who joins James' writing class, offering the tentative possibility of romance. Rich Sommer's Chris, a genial mediocrity being pulled in every direction, is an excellent fall guy.

Adding significantly to this atmosphere of shattered hopes is Beowulf Boritt's set, which places a turntable (containing James' and Karen's very different living rooms) against a peeling, weathered billboard advertising a new housing subdivision; Donald Holder's frequently crepuscular late-afternoon and morning looks add to the sense of loss. Jeff Mahshie's costumes -- James' long-sleeved slacker T-shirts, Chris' suits, Karen's no-nonsense casual wear -- fit each character perfectly. Obadiah Eaves provides some solid sound effects -- cars arriving, television programs -- as well as subtle reinforcement for his original music.

Best of all, there's Morse, whose every choice as Tom Durnin is hair-raisingly right. He's been through hell and come out the other end, unchanged and unwilling to look inside. He can face anything, except dismissal: "I am 58 years old, Chris," he says. "How am I going to start over? How am I supposed to do that?" It's a question that lingers long after you've left the Roundabout. --David Barbour