OFF-BROADWAY REVIEW
KINDNESS
Reviewed by Jenny Sandman
Published 2008-10-18
Adam Rapp’s new play at Playwrights Horizons felt more, well, normal than his previous stuff. For those of you familiar with Rapp’s work (Red Light Winter, Blackbird, Stone Cold Dead Serious, Essential Self-Defense, and Bingo with the Indians, among others), his plays are populated with grim slackers and crazy Midwesterners, all watching and waiting for their inevitable doom. His plays are always a little off-kilter, a little unsettling, like watching them through a funhouse mirror, and he has a wonderful facility with language (especially slang).
Maryanne (Annette O’Toole) and her teenage son, Dennis (Christopher Denham), have come to New York for some sightseeing. Maryanne, who is dying of an aggressive cancer, wants to see the new hit musical, Survivin’. Dennis, in typical teenage boy fashion, doesn’t. So Maryanne invites her new friend and cabdriver, Herman (Ray Anthony Thomas). While they’re gone, a mysterious woman named Frances (Katherine Waterston) slips into the room and strikes up an odd friendship with Dennis. She’s clearly on the run from something, and clearly upset. During their weird evening, Dennis reveals to her his secret desire to put his mother out of her misery. The play is ultimately about mercy, and hope, and the search for human connection.
However, it’s hard to see Rapp in Kindness. Some of the pieces fit—the main characters are Midwesterners, there’s the obvious facility with language, and the ending is fittingly twisted. And there the similarities end. There’s none of the brash exuberance of Bingo with the Indians, none of the hopelessness and indifference that characterized Red Light Winter and Essential Self-Defense. It’s not entirely fair to judge a work against its predecessors, I know, but Kindness feels like a departure for Rapp. It feels, well, bland and a little formulaic. Perhaps it’s the production—which is also a little bland and formulaic, on an oversized set with too many triangles in the blocking. It’s not the acting—the performances are all excellent. Christopher Denham, a Rapp regular, makes a great gawky, awkward 17-year-old.
Don’t get me wrong, the play is very good. I just hope Rapp’s writing hasn’t lost its downtown New York insouciance.
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