Theatre in Review: Benefactors (Keen Company/Theatre Row) No good deed goes unpunished; that's the moral of Michael Frayn's Benefactors, a tense, compact drama that begins as the tale of a soured friendship and ends up asking some very knotty questions about the impulse to do good. Not seen in New York since its modest Broadway run in 1985, it proves to be aging remarkably well -- at least in Carl Forsman's well-cast and acutely observed production. Meet David and Jane. He is a successful architect in late young adulthood or early middle age; she is his spectacularly competent spouse and professional helpmate. It is the late '60s and David's newest project is a down-at-the-heels London neighborhood, which he proposes razing and replacing with new buildings, including a couple of high-rises. His motives are the finest; even if it will cause tremendous displacement for those already living there, David sees the construction as a benign act of social engineering that will improve the lives of the poor. David and Jane's neighbors provide a marked, almost comic, contrast. Colin is a sullen, sarcastic, boozy journalist, the sort of person who gets enjoyment out of taking the opposite side in any argument. Sheila, his wife, is a prime candidate for the Good Housekeeping Seal of Disapproval. Her cooking, when she remembers to fix a meal at all, is inedible. Her house is in a state of disorder. Her children prefer to spend most of their time at David and Jane's -- and, truth to tell, so does Sheila. By degrees, Colin and Sheila become semi-permanent members of David and Jane's household, taking most of their meals there, leaving their children around, and in general taking advantage of their unthinking generosity. There's a slight smugness in all this-- both David and Jane see Colin and Sheila as in need of repair. It's around this time, however, that, as David mordantly notes, "The very successful redevelopment of Colin and Sheila proved to be full of hidden sewers and geological faults." The trouble begins when David gives Sheila a job as an office assistant and she promptly falls in love with him. Colin, enraged, walks out, and egged on by feelings of middle-aged ennui and self-disgust, holes up in a squat in David's development; he launches a populist revolt against David's urban renewal project. At the same time, recession looms, government policy begins to shift toward a policy of renovation, and David's project, which has metastasized into a vast concrete park, becomes endangered. Using an interesting shifting-point-of-view approach, in which all four characters recall the action of the play from the vantage point of the early '80s, we see how Colin manipulates David and Jane's marriage from afar, and how David's inability to see Colin as anything other than a badly behaved friend results in disaster. "Sides have been taken," Jane warns David, adding that his brand of goodness "is a kind of moral blindness." Or, as Colin notes, speaking of his campaign, "We don't have to worry about being fair or truthful or tidy." Benefactors leaves you with plenty to think about, especially the question of whether liberalism in the modern sense, with its quick fixes and improvement schemes for all, can survive in the face of evil. But I'm guessing that, seeing the current revival, you'll be too caught up in the taut, four-way interplay among the members of the excellent cast to dwell too much on such abstract matters. Daniel Jenkins gives David a weary appeal, an instinctive kindliness mixed with a burning passion for his work, all of which contrasts markedly with the older, sadder man narrating the tale of his ruination. Stephen Barker Turner's Colin is a tightly coiled ball of resentment, finding relief, but no real satisfaction, in lashing out at others, especially Sheila. Deanne Lorette's Sheila is an exquisite study in passive-aggression, her teary refrain of "It's all my fault!" being repeated to suitably grating effect. Best of all is Vivienne Benesch's Jane, who sees disaster coming and tries mightily to stay out of its way; she makes especially good use of her penetrating stare when sizing up the follies of everyone around her. The action unfolds on Dane Laffrey's clever set, which places David and Jane's kitchen and one or two additional pieces of furniture against the unfinished walls of a house under construction. Jennifer Paar's costumes are reasonably accurate to the period; she also knowingly contrasts Jane's chic Capri pants and matching tops with Sheila's dowdy dirndl-like dresses. Will Pickens' sound design includes some well-chosen music and effects such as the offstage voices of children. Josh Bradford's lighting is a solidly professional piece of work. Nothing goes well for anyone in Benefactors. One marriage is destroyed, another is changed beyond recognition; revenge proves fleeting and barely worth the effort. Frayn isn't one for melodrama, however, and he makes clear that all of his characters will find a way to go on, one way or another. Still, this resolution is a far cry from the hopes and ideals with which the play begins. The distance between these two things is what makes Benefactors such a wise and absorbing piece of work.--David Barbour 
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