CAR TALK
William Parker
ccSCOOP Review
08-06-09 - OK, so there's the title, which immediately makes one reference those two cutups who laugh at their own jokes with jarring, annoying regularity on NPR. No. CAR talk—like what people do in cars when they're driving up the Taconic Parkway, trying to get from Manhattan to Vermont without getting a ticket or hitting a deer or destroying their marriages—or those of their children.
Ed is a nice hamische guy driving the SUV, he's married to Millie, a watch-the-chicken-I-have-to-go-take-a-Valium hysteric, and they're en route to visit their daughter Rosalie, who, besides coming out as gay and being as much of an emotional wreck as her mother, will inform both parents of her intent to marry Zoe, a taxidermist from Texas.
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Bonnie Black as Millie and Larry Sharp as Ed |
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Car Talk is being advertised as "a frank and hilarious look at the endangered institution known as marriage." Unfortunately, it is anything but hilarious, and it absolutely should be. All the elements are here for the making of a very funny comedy, with the through line being the relationship between mother and daughter. Any Upper West Side Jews who have ever faced the prospect of a rural wedding where one bride gives the other a stuffed wolf will immediately empathize, as should we all
It's largely a problem of style. As Neil Simon—or Harvey Fierstein or Woody Allen—can attest, funny, hysterical Jews have been a mainstay of our boards since time immemorial. The characters in Car Talk, as directed by Laura Margolis, are just hysterical. The laughs are stepped on or just not realized, and, while I may be wrong, there seems to be a little bit of nervousness about drawing on anything resembling ethnicity for character's—or laughter's—sake.
Playwright Lucile Lichtblau is ambitious in wanting to cover so much ground in so many ways (literally, with the creation of a mise-en-scene of a big, boxy SUV, designed by Randall Parsons, combined with interesting video montage from Brian Massman to keep us all moving along as the dialogue unfolds), and what she has to say is important. The problem is in attempting to say it all at once in a short period of time, when the most important element should be in working out and fully exploring the subtext of these relationships. Speaking of Harvey Fierstein, Car Talk reminds me of Torch Song Trilogy in several ways that will be obvious to the viewer. That play originated as a series of one-acts, and it might be wise for Ms.Lichtblau to re-realize what she has here into a two-act play.
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Melissa MacLeod Herion as Rosalie and Abby Lee as Zoe
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Larry Sharp as father Ed, Bonnie Black as mother Millie, and Melissa MacLeod Herion as daughter Rosalie have an uphill battle playing without laughs, while mother and daughter come off shrill and tiresome. But Abby Lee as Zoe the taxidermist gives us the most in her quiet reactions to all the neurosis she's about to marry into. It's a wonder that she and Ed don't leave the other two on the road and drive right up into Canada.
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