A Lukewarm Domestic Drama

Another Marriage

Steppenwolf’s world premiere production of ensemble member Kate Arrington’s first play, Another Marriage, is hardly unworthy of Steppenwolf’s well-deserved reputation as America’s greatest ensemble theatre.  But neither is it destined to go down in history as one of Steppenwolf’s classic productions — not without some redevelopment and rethinking. 

Another Marriage is a somewhat middling domestic drama in which the play’s “beats” fall into place in a fairly predictable manner.  Ian Barford (who has been a worthy part of some of Steppenwolf’s magnificent recent productions, including Linda Vista and August: Osage County) plays a famous writer (at some point in the not too distant future, “famous writers” may, regrettably, be as obsolete as “famous vaudevillians”) who falls in love with a frustrated aspiring writer played by Judy Greer, the movie and television actress in her Steppenwolf debut.  

Barford’s character, Nick, is initially so smitten with Greer’s character, Sunny, that he strips completely naked in front of her even before their first date, in public, and in the middle of a freezing Chicago winter day.  What follows is an intimate interlude of love and eros followed by betrayal, pain, struggle, and mutual reassessment.  None of this is unexpected.  As one of the characters states (ventriloquizing, perhaps, a bit of textual self-consciousness by the playwright) “a happy marriage won’t get you past Chapter Four.” 

The play has a couple of central conceits that are interesting.  The set — which at first glance seems just another one of those lazily minimalistic sets that plague our theatre these days — gradually reveals itself to be a cleverly constructed and thematically fitting environment that complements Steppenwolf’s striking new in-the-round Ensemble Theatre. There’s a turntable in the middle of the stage where the characters sometimes sit and talk at a table or snuggle together in bed, giving everyone in the audience the opportunity to see and clearly hear the actors (well, half the time at least — the other half of the time, as a given actor revolves away, their dialogue is slightly muffled, though not irredeemably so.)  The constant slow turning is a fitting metaphor for the slow turning of Nick and Sunny’s marriage itself.  There also are scenic elements that enter unexpectedly from the fly loft, and a trap door-like sub-stage stairway that opens up to allow characters to exit and enter the proceedings in an organic-seeming and symbolically resonant way — bounding happily up, and ducking angrily or ashamedly down, rather than merely ambling off the stage.  

The other conceit is embodied in the role played by Nick and Sunny’s daughter, Jo, appealingly portrayed by Steppenwolf newcomer Nicole Scimeca.  Although we first encounter the character as a newborn, she primarily functions, as a young adult, in a role that’s roughly analogous to the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, reconstructing and reinterpreting her parents’ marriage and the death of her mother’s mother in childbirth.  Clutching an IPad throughout the play, Jo types out many of the supertitles that divide the scenes and contextualize the action.  (Other supertitles are text exchanges between Nick and Sunny.) 

The problem I had with Another Marriage, directed by ensemble member Terry Kinney, is that Arrington’s script seems to be content with half measures.  It’s tentative, and never plunges deeply into the pain and anguish that is implied by the events.

For example, Jo’s role as a teller and interpreter of her parents’ story never fully takes advantage of the opportunities for ambiguity, irony and cognitive dissonance that could have added a rich additional layer of psychological complexity to the drama. Nor do we get to know as much about the adult version of Jo herself as we would like.

And there is a startling moment when Sunny, filled with rage and despair, texts something truly awful to Nick, but his reaction is never seen, and the repercussions of the text are never explored.  The effect of this potentially very powerful development is further vitiated by a supertitle that reads “This might not have happened.”

Nick’s second marriage, to an easily impressed and rough around the edges youthful admirer with low self-esteem (Caroline Neff), is never explored in detail — both their falling into, and falling out of, love is almost completely elided.  

Judy Greer, as anyone who has seen her onscreen knows, has a wonderful, off-kilter comic energy (think of her manic role in Arrested Development, one of the best things about that wildly creative comedy series) and also demonstrates here the ability to essay a dramatic role effectively.  Unfortunately, she isn’t given enough to do by the script, which at every point seems to flinch or pull back from her rage and despair — as well as from Nick’s self-loathing and disappointment at his puzzling life choices and foundering career as an author.  He refers, at one point, to his first novel, which was about, he says, “some cocky 22-year-old version of myself filled with contempt for a character I have now become.” This feels, at once, like an overly familiar trope about middle-age mediocrity as well as a too-convenient way of directly stating a conclusion that would have been better reached by the audience observing the metamorphosis of Nick’s character over the course of the play. 

The dialogue, too, is sometimes a little stiff, lacking in subtext and overly focused on exposition, as when Sunny refers, when speaking to Nick, to “your agent Paul.”  Doesn’t Nick know his agent’s name?

There is much to like about this production, though.  On a few occasions, we get to see Judy Greer employ her gift for withering sarcasm, and there are many moments of high humor and poignancy.  It’s a fairly satisfying evening that makes one look forward to this play’s next, and presumably dramatically heightened, iteration. 

Recommended

Reviewed by Michael Antman

June 15 – July 23

Presented by Steppenwolf Theatre Company in its Ensemble Theatre, 1646 N. Halsted St.

Tickets are available at www.steppenwolf.org or by calling the box office at 312-335-1650.

Further information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.