Theatre in Review: We Live Here (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center) As I left Manhattan Theatre Club the other night, I was surrounded by groups of theatergoers struggling to parse the action of We Live Here. One or two expressed frank disbelief that it had gotten a production at all. I have a theory about this: I'll bet that MTC took the script on the basis of the first act alone. Is this likely? Maybe not, but it would explain a great deal. Anyone reading or seeing the first act of We Live Here would, in all probability, conclude that Zoe Kazan is a playwright of real promise. Skipping the crutches and shortcuts employed by so many of her peers -- including screenplay-style construction and direct address -- she carefully introduces us to the members of a New England family on the eve of a wedding, neatly establishing that the clan is riddled with secrets, and deftly postponing any revelations in order to build suspense and engagement with the characters. Add in the skill of Sam Gold, the director, in orchestrating the action -- aided by an uncommonly skilled cast -- and you have every reason to expect a gripping domestic drama. The action unfolds in the New England home of Maggie and Lawrence; their daughter, Althea, a 30-ish schoolteacher, is set to marry Sandy, a gentle artist who is readying a major New York show. (In an early warning sign of troubles to come, Maggie, who is so task-oriented that she busies herself with opening the wedding gifts and keeping a log of who gave what, speculates that Sandy is so sweet-natured, he must be gay. Charming as this family is, niceness only gets you so far with them.) The real complications arrive with Dinah, the younger daughter, a Juilliard student, who surprises everyone with a last-minute request to bring a date to the wedding. This is met with some surprise, but it's nothing compared to the reaction she gets when she produces her new boyfriend, Daniel, who, we quickly learn, has a long history with this family, having even lived with them for a time. Maggie and Lawrence profess to be delighted to see Daniel; one look at him and Althea threatens to pass out. Even as we're speculating about what has gone down between Daniel and the others, we learn that Althea once had a twin sister, who, apparently, is dead. Most of this is news to Sandy, who looks on from the sidelines as the family portrait is filled out with telling details -- and more than a few shadows as well. There are certain awkward touches-- Kazan's jokes tend to be wry and wan rather than truly funny, and there's a worrisome touch of the twee in her depiction of the relations of Althea and Sandy. (For one thing, they tend to use bunny imagery in referring to each other, a concept that made me instinctively recoil.) For the most part, however, it's hard not to be intrigued by the sudden silences, evasions, and surprise bursts of temper that strongly suggest we're only getting half the story; there's definitely a touch of Chekhov in the author's sensibility. Chekhov gives way to Days of Our Lives in the second act, however. It begins, promisingly, with an intimate conversation between Dinah and Sandy, as she sits for her portrait. We learn of her bout of anorexia, and he makes this arresting observation: "You think your sadness is the most interesting thing about you. Actually, it's the least." Then, news of an accident involving Althea and Daniel sends the story into overdrive. There's an extremely maladroit flashback in which Jessica Collins, as Althea, trying to make like a teenage temptress, lasciviously sucks on a Popsicle, while taking part in an extremely ill-advised seduction. This is followed by a final scene that packs so many revelations and ends so abruptly that it must set a world record for dangling plot lines. So little is resolved that, as the lights go down on the final scene, the audience seems unclear that the play is actually over. It's one of the most blatant examples I've ever encountered of a playwright losing control of her material, and it's sad to see the efforts of a blue-chip cast go for naught. Aside from Collins, who struggles with a character whose intentions seem to change line by line, and Oscar Isaac, assigned one of the season's most thankless roles as Daniel, everyone else shines. Mark Blum is touching as Lawrence, who keeps a wary, if loving, eye on his family. Betty Gilpin is positively radiant as Dinah, who is still struggling to establish a separate identity from her loved ones. Amy Irving makes clear how Maggie's amusingly overbearing behavior acts as a mask, concealing her deep fears for her daughters' safety. Jeremy Shamos' Sandy is a man of hidden depths and a surprising amount of steel underneath his quiet manner. But such talents are helpless when the action turns to screaming, an oversupply of bombshells, and lines like "Everything I touch, I smash -- that's who I am!" Even some of the slicker trappings of Gold's productions have an undermining effect. John Lee Beatty's astonishingly deep and detailed set -- which gives us a view of several rooms at once -- seems to promise a work of enormous complexity; it all but overwhelms Kazan's undernourished play. (It's also ludicrously posh, given Lawrence's career. All I can say is, if this is the kind of real estate you get from writing about Aristotle, where do I sign up?) On the plus side, Ben Stanton effectively deploys a series of sidelight washes to suggest the passage of time, and David Zinn's costumes are full of subtle touches that differentiate the characters. Ryan Rumery's sound design blends effects, such as doorbells and thunder in the distance, with his original music and generous helpings of Dave Brubeck. Kazan seems to be making a point about people who choose self-destruction over happiness, but it's lost in a play that self-destructs so spectacularly. She's got something, however, and you can see why Manhattan Theatre Club was interested in her. At the moment, she needs a crash course in construction--badly.--David Barbour 
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