Nyt Review of the Realistic Joneses by Will Eno at the Performing Arts of Woodstock
Theater Review
Casual Joy and Dread, Mingling Every Mean solar day
NEW HAVEN — Intimations of mortality hover in the pauses punctuating the dialogue in "The Realistic Joneses," the tender, funny, terrific new play by Will Eno at the Yale Repertory Theater here. Mr. Eno's vocalisation, which teases out the poesy in the pedestrian and finds glinting humor in the static that infuses our unpleasing efforts to communicate, is as distinctive every bit any American playwright's today. He writes well-nigh big matters — nothing bigger than life and expiry, after all — as if they were incidental oddities deserving of wry comment but no dandy moralizing or posturing.
"The Realistic Joneses," directed with grace by the busy Sam Golden, is dappled with the quirky non sequiturs and deadpan wordplay that are among Mr. Eno's signature furnishings, along with a tranquillity insistence on the majesty and mystery of human existence. As delivered by an ideal cast — Johanna Solar day, Glenn Fitzgerald, Tracy Letts and Parker Posey, all keenly attuned to Mr. Eno'south sensibility — his off-kilter dialogue comes to seem every bit natural, and lovely, as the chirping of crickets and the sound of bird vocal.
Such images leap to mind because the bustling of the natural world is heard throughout "The Realistic Joneses," which is set in a small town in the countryside (more rural than Mr. Eno's "Middletown"), where two couples who share the same last name find their lives slowly twining together in ways large and small.
Bob and Jennifer Jones (Mr. Letts and Ms. Day) are taking in the night air in the backyard when John and Pony Jones (Mr. Fitzgerald and Ms. Posey), perhaps a decade or so younger, come to innovate themselves, canteen of wine in silver cellophane in hand. They accept merely moved into a house downward the road. Conversation lurches from friendly and bad-mannered to all of a sudden intimate, when Jennifer confides that Bob has a disease for which he is undergoing complicated treatment.
"Say no more than," says Pony.
"Have you had feel with something like this?" Jennifer naturally responds.
"I just didn't want you to say whatsoever more than," Pony replies flatly. (And nobody does flat as funny as Ms. Posey.)
That's the Eno touch: the startling, oftentimes hilarious eruption of blunt honesty or, just as oft, offhand profundity, into the meandering byways of everyday chitchat. In the 2d scene Jennifer and John see each other at a grocery store, where they embark on another fumbling conversation. ("I studied Italian in school," Jennifer says at one indicate, apropos of zippo.) Afterward she confesses that the strain of dealing with Bob'due south illness is getting to her, John suddenly takes hold of her arm.
"What are you doing?" Jennifer asks, mildly dislocated.
"I don't know," John says. "Reaching out."
"Why?"
"Because," he responds. "And because you lot have pretty eyes. They're sad, but they're actually pretty. They're skilful."
"Well, that's very — I really need glasses to read," Jennifer says, flustered.
"Interesting."
Not actually, of course, but that'southward the kind of meaningless remark from which Mr. Eno derives both humor and twinges of quiet feeling. And what is truly interesting about his writing is how he sidles upwards to seriousness so casually, tiptoeing toward the momentous by composing scenes that accept the rhythms of offbeat sketch one-act with a metaphysical twist.
Nosotros before long larn the reason for John'due south attempt to connect with Jennifer: he is suffering from the same concluding affliction that Bob has. (A leading specialist in the disease practices in town.) Both marriages are loving but strained by the specter of encroaching affliction.
Jennifer, portrayed with a flinty earthiness suffused with quiet warmth past Ms. Day, is frustrated that Bob chooses to remain equally ignorant equally he tin can nearly the progress of his affliction and options for treatment. Mr. Letts, the actor and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "August: Osage County," is as well superb, making Bob'southward gruff denial moving and sympathetic.
John has chosen denial for Pony, keeping her in ignorance of his diagnosis because of her skittishness about illness. Mr. Fitzgerald infuses his operation with a boyish sweetness that makes John'south oddball observations and his lapses into moody philosophizing seem perfectly natural. And Ms. Posey, well known for her years as an indie-film queen, may merely be the quintessential interpreter of Mr. Eno's idiosyncratic style, with her naturally sardonic demeanor and affinity for finding the humor (and the humanity) in seemingly humdrum dialogue.
I of the funniest passages in the play, which is composed every bit a series of short scenes separated by tedious blackouts, finds Pony making a rare attempt at prayer. She senses something awry with John, and worries she volition not be able to cope with whatever is coming.
"This feels weird," she says, midprayer. "No crime. Yous probably just call up I'k ane of and then many people. You're probably like, my God, what is this fifty-fifty about? Maybe y'all're going to fire everything down anyway. I don't know your crazy heed."
Getting to know i another'due south crazy minds is what the four characters in "The Realistic Joneses" attempt to practice, even as they recognize that knowing their own is probably merely as impossible. Looming above them all is the smashing heed — or absenteeism thereof — known as the universe. Both the lighting (by Mark Barton) and the haunting sound design (by Ken Goodwin) evoke the experience of night in the countryside beautifully, when the world can feel either terrifyingly empty or animate with compassionate life.
Although they are all facing the possibility of imminent and irrevocable loss — of life or love or both — the characters in "The Realistic Joneses" discuss their ain pain and one another'south with a blunt equanimity that may not always be realistic, just feels no less true.
"I don't think annihilation good is going to happen to united states," Bob says in the last scene, every bit both couples sit down on the porch, contemplating the night heaven. "But, yous know, what are you going to practise." What indeed, Bob?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/theater/reviews/the-realistic-joneses-at-yale-repertory-theater.html
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