Theatre in Review: Flight (DR2 Theatre)

In Flight, Michel Wallerstein takes two hot-button issues -- Alzheimer's disease and the Holocaust -- and subjects them to dismayingly ham-handed treatment. There's a fascinating story inside this material, but it needs to be treated with far more finesse than anyone has been able to provide.

Andrew, a successful money manager in his 40s, has put his elderly mother, Judith, into an assisted-living facility. She is surprisingly happy about the move, an attitude that provides little comfort to Andrew. An only son, he has always yearned to be closer to the frustratingly distant Judith, who has resisted anything like assistance, or emotional engagement, from him. In an amusing scene, Andrew asks Judith, who is only too happy to shed her possessions, about certain treasured family heirlooms -- most notably a tea set allegedly used by Sigmund Freud -- only to learn that she has fabricated each item's colorful past; Andrew is aghast, reacting as if his entire childhood has been stolen from him. He isn't any happier to learn that she has mastered the computer -- "Yes, Andrew," she says dryly, "I surf the web"-- without his assistance; another mother-son togetherness project bites the dust.

Once in her new home, however, Judith rapidly demonstrates signs of mental deterioration. This is shattering news to Andrew, but, ironically, it is also an opportunity; the more Judith's mind slips into the past, the more she opens up about the ugly details of her years in the Nazi death camps. A former film historian and the widow of a film editor, she has left her harrowing youthful experiences on the cutting room floor; only when she no longer recognizes her son can she reveal herself to him.

It's a compelling story, and, thanks to Maria Tucci's sterling work as Judith, her unearthed memories are quietly gripping. Unfortunately, everything else in Flight seems to be written in a kind of shorthand, a decision that compromises the play's reality. Its dramatic fabric is loaded with dropped stitches. Alex is embroiled in a bad relationship with an unseen refugee from Ceausescu's Romania. (In a bizarrely unbelievable moment, when the girlfriend fails to show up at a fundraising event, he impersonates her, taking her life story as his own.) We're meant to understand that, thanks to his relationship with Judith, Alex is a classic codependent, but it all amounts to a dramatic dead end.

There's also the matter of Linda, the social worker who becomes over-involved in Judith's case. (Linda's last name is McCartney, which leads to a handful of bad Beatles jokes.) A pushy neurotic with a phobia about germs -- meeting Andrew in a bar, she practically recoils in horror at the sight of Andrew putting his hand in bowl of nuts -- she probes Judith's memories, jotting them down in her journal, eventually endangering her career with her meddling. Linda's character never comes into focus -- in one scene she's supposed to be kooky and charming, in another she comes across as an intrusive know-it-all; there's the suggestion that she might provide the otherwise-engaged Andrew with a love interest, another idea that gets left by the wayside. It doesn't help that Judith's Alzheimer's seems to strike as quickly as a heart attack -- she becomes demented on cue, as it were -- or that Linda has several icky speeches suggesting that the senile live in a separate-but-equal parallel reality.

Thanks to its sketchy construction and sentimental conceits, Flight is a jumble of unexplored ideas. While Wallerstein's intentions are clearly sincere, this once-over-lightly approach to such powerful issues feels a little exploitative, a search for easy tears. Padraic Lillis' direction does little to fill in the gaps -- probably an impossible task in any event. Anyway, Tucci, an actress we don't see often enough, does her considerable best, even with the thinnest and most unbelievable material. Jonathan Walker and Maddie Corman, a pair of total pros, do what they can with the roles of Andrew and Linda, which isn't much.

Another key problem is Lea Umberger's set design. Andrew and Linda are clearly people of means, but her new apartment looks like the worst of public housing; it's desperately in need of some set decoration. Since it stands in for all of the play's locations, couldn't the production have sprung for something more detailed? At the performance I attended, when Linda notes that her place isn't nearly as nice as Judith's, there were snickers in the audience. Anyway, Umberger's costumes are okay, as are Sarah Sidman's lighting and Elizabeth Rhodes' sound.

There's nothing wrong with ambition, but the subject matter of Flight demands more skill than Wallerstein can provide. As a result, he ends up trivializing subjects that require delicate handling. It's a heartfelt play, but an unfortunate one.--David Barbour