Theatre in Review: Dan Cody's Yacht (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage I)

	Rick Holmes, Jordan Lage, Meredith Forlenza, Kristen Bush, Laura Kai Chen. Photo: Joan Marcus

In his previous play, The City of Conversation, Anthony Giardina used the living room of a prominent Washington, DC, hostess as a staging ground for the fall of postwar liberalism and the rise of the Ronald Reagan right. In Dan Cody's Yacht, he pens a tale of two Americas set in adjoining, yet wildly contrasting, Massachusetts towns. Clearly, he isn't afraid of knotty material, which he often handles with considerable wit; also, the lead character, Kevin O'Neill, is a true figure of our time. The action of the new play suffers, however, because it hinges on an apparent, and quite remarkable, act of generosity that neither Kevin nor the playwright can adequately explain.

When we meet Kevin, he appears to be trying to bribe Cara Russo, his son's English teacher. The boy, Conor, has once again failed spectacularly, this time earning an F for a paper on The Great Gatsby. Taking in the fact that Conor hasn't bothered to read the book, Kevin says, "He gets no credit for trying to fake his way through?" When this tactic gets a frosty reception, he tries diversions, personal questions, and what, to him, probably seems like charm. Getting nowhere, he puts a series of bills down on a desk. Actually, it's a big fake-out; the money isn't real. "You see, I was only testing you," he says. "And, by the way, you passed."

Having established a thoroughly hostile atmosphere with Cara, Kevin, who works in private equity, throws a curveball. Cara teaches in Stillwell, a well-off community gifted with a high-powered public school system. She lives, however, in Patchett, the failing town next door, where expectations are low and students in English class make their way through decades-old torn paperback editions of Exodus and To Kill a Mockingbird. Cara sits on the committee tasked with potentially proposing a merger of the two school districts. Or, as Kevin puts it, she has been "chosen by her peers to be the powerful voice of the teachers in our town's current, ill-advised plunge into liberal American mediocrity. The proposal to...join the drug-addicted, poverty-ridden, low-achieving children of your little town to the drug-addicted, but still high-achieving, children of mine."

Having sussed out that Cara, a single mother, is barely getting by on her teacher's salary, Kevin invites her to join the little investment club he runs with a handful of friends. Even with the limited amount of cash at her disposal, she stands to significantly improve her standing, he insists. This couldn't be a Faustian bribe, could it? He isn't trying to influence her vote on the school district merger proposal, is he?

Surprisingly, the answer is no -- or, at least, not entirely. Cara reluctantly, awkwardly, shows up, and, with Kevin's assistance, adds a fair amount to her wealth. But Conor's grade is not raised and the issue of the school district merger is allowed to fade away. (As Kevin accurately notes, the committee can recommend anything it wants, but the citizens of Stillwell will never stand for their "kids taking a class from a history teacher who's been using a textbook printed when there was still a USSR.") For that matter, the issue isn't entirely clear-cut. Cara's friend Cathy, a lifelong resident of Patchett, doesn't approve of the merger, either. Referring to her daughter, a member of the Patchett debate team, she says, "I looked up the debate team over there. Smart kids. Slotnick. Leibowicz. Chan. Patel. How's my Britney going to compete with those kids?" One of the prime virtues of Dan Cody's Yacht is its recognition that not only the privileged are inclined to circle their wagons when faced with fundamental change.

Instead, the play becomes focused on the intense relationship between Kevin and Cara -- which, by the way, is not a romance. (Kevin is gay, although it is hard to imagine him in an intimate relationship with anyone.) The central question dogging the action is, why is Kevin so determined to help her? The answer, such as it is, is suggested by the play's title, an allusion to the episode in The Great Gatsby in which Jay Gatsby signs on as personal assistant to millionaire Dan Cody, using him as a model for his own path to wealth. Kevin, who came from an undistinguished background and loves F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, has used it as a template for his own advancement: "This list Gatsby made as a boy. His father brings it to the funeral. 6:15, rise; 6:45, lift weights; 7:15, study electricity. It was making a plan for yourself and sticking to it that moved me. And here's the thing: it's a joke in the book, Fitzgerald wants you to take it as a joke, but you know what? People who want to do well in this country do not laugh at Gatsby's list. It's how we f---ing succeed. Getting up and sticking to the list."

And yet Kevin suffers from a deep need to play Dan Cody to a worthy young person -- in this case, Cara. Giardina struggles to convert this rather literary notion into a deeply felt motivation, but so much of the play is turned over to the endless back-and-forth between Kevin and Cara -- and Kevin is both relentlessly provocative and not nearly as witty as he thinks he is -- that he risks coming off as a nag and a bore. The main source of conflict in the play's later passages is the possibility of the modestly enriched Cara moving to Stillwell, a decision that lays bare the fragility of her friendship with Cathy and opens up a war front with her daughter, Angela. And yet Kevin still can't stop pressing his case. The play reveals, by degrees, his loneliness and isolation, but one can't help thinking, from the get-go, that Kevin is awfully insufferable, even when he has charitable intentions. Really, the devil should be more appealing than this; otherwise, what is the point of sinning?

This is nothing against Rick Holmes, one of the New York theatre's most accomplished utility men, whose work here goes a long way toward giving Kevin some necessary shading. Tasked with facing off against such an obstreperous, ulterior character, Kristen Bush, as Cara, fights back with brio, showing plenty of steel in the early scenes and plausibly slipping into moral confusion as she begins to develop a taste for privilege. (She may overplay her hand in one crucial argument, but if so, it is with the express approval of the author and the director, Doug Hughes.) The best scenes focus on the younger generation: John Kroft, making his New York debut, avoids making Conor into a slacker caricature, especially when patiently explaining to his father that he will never be the go-getter his father expects him to be. Another relative newcomer, Casey Whyland, impresses as Angela, Cara's daughter, a gifted poet who dreams of Vassar, yet knows she will be hopelessly out of place among the Stillwell student body. She more than holds her own in a brutally frank confrontation between Angela and Kevin.

In addition, Roxanna Hope Radja makes the most of her appearances as Cathy, especially when she takes down Cara for replacing their regular night out of nachos and margaritas with craft cocktails at a chic Stillwell restaurant. There are brief but effective appearances by Jordan Lage, Meredith Forlenza, and Laura Kai Chen, the latter as a tiger mother who is expert at throwing shade in public.

John Lee Beatty's set, which places two blonde wood playing spaces on a turntable, feels oddly anonymous; it doesn't really allow for much visual contrast between the haves and have-nots, but it is lit with unfailing sensitivity and detail by Jen Schriever. Catherine Zuber's costumes are revealing of the social divides separating the characters. Fitz Patton's sound system efficiently delivers a broad range of musical selections, including several jazz arrangements and a couple of cuts from the pop band Animal Collective.

There's a probing question at the heart of Dan Cody's Yacht: In the economically stratified society of 2018, can an entire class be lifted up, or is it enough -- even preferred -- to give a hand to one or two worthy, talented persons? And is the latter approach somehow embedded in American culture? If only it were easier to believe in Kevin's largesse, such thoughts might have more teeth. This one amounts to a fascinating near-miss; the mix of Fitzgeraldian ideas about striving and wealth with the harsh economic reality of contemporary America is a provocative idea that, in the end, nearly talks itself to death. -- David Barbour