Review
Bhutan
Cherry Lane Theatre
December 7, 2006
Morgan Wycks
mwycks@nyconstage.org
After a successful run in its studio space, Daisy Foote's Bhutan
moved to the Cherry Lane's mainstage for good reason. As a kind of kitchen sink
drama, Ms. Foote shows that those Peyton Place New England towns may have moved
through half a century of time but the mindset is still the same. People can
still come from the wrong side of the tracks and young love can still have its
close-minded tragedies.
As viewed through the adolescent eyes of Frances, the world in which she dwells
needs escaping and with the help of a recently relocated Columbia professor, she
learns there are places seemingly better than the confines of a Massachusetts
town. Frances' widowed mother, Mary, works, if not speaks, with a Puritan ethic
who believes that no-nonsense, practical, blue collar endeavors are the only
ones worth her family's time. She wants her son, Warren, to finish high school
and learn the plumbing trade. She wants Frances to not even think about the
wasted time of college. In the meantime, Mary's sister, Sara, spends her time
drinking since the break-up with her ex-boyfriend of 15 years. She turned him
down when he asked her to marry him and subsequently weeks later he took up with
someone else and married. Warren has romance troubles of his own that have led
him into doing time.
The play begins with a prison visit. The following scene is a flash-back to the
family home in a somewhat better time. From then on, these two locations' scenes
are presented in parallel time, the prison scenes just ahead of the family home
scenes and Frances is snagged straddling the middle as if almost trapped in time
warp. The negotiations she makes and her viewpoints that change are very
surreptitiously the meat of the drama. Though we may lose her point by the end,
Ms. Foote, like her Pulitzer Prize-winning, playwright father, Horton, presents
an aged world where often only sadness, struggle and stasis can be answers to
existence. Having several relatives in the Boston area, I can honestly say the
dialogue is spot-on and the characters true to the climate. Where Mr. Foote
covers the South, and now Ms. Foote is covering the Northeast, perhaps another
writer in the family can go west.
Director Evan Yionoulis has cast the work very well and keeps the pace at a
fiery clip. Though Tahsa Lawrence (Mary), Sarah Lord (Frances), Amy Redford
(Sara), and Jedadiah Schultz (Warren) all know their characters inside out and
bring emotional honesty to their travails, each one has a tendency to push
something too hard, whether it's an attitude, a character trait, or a vocal
quality. Though it's quibbling, Mr. Yionoulis could tweak them to pull back a
bit. Nevertheless, the production is a fine one and it's heartening to see
Daisey Foote filling her father's shoes.
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