OFF-BROADWAY REVIEW
THREE CHANGES
Reviewed by Jenny Sandman
Published 2008-09-15
Warning: spoiler alert!
Nicky Silver’s new play at Playwrights Horizons, Three Changes, is kind of a backward Madame Bovary. Nate (Dylan McDermott) and Laurel (Maura Tierney) are an average upper-middle-class Upper West Side couple, until Nate’s brother Hal (Scott Cohen) comes for an unannounced and extended stay. Hal’s visit, at first an innocuous chance to reconnect, then an annoyance, swiftly turns ominous as he shakes apart their world and then their marriage.
And here’s where the connection to Madame Bovary comes in—although Nate, rather than Laurel, becomes the center of the play’s pathos and loss. Laurel seems a more obvious choice. A timid woman, who fears even dreaming larger than a home and family, she ostensibly has the most to lose with any radical change. But she manages to adapt and even thrive with the new arrangements. Once Nate’s lifeless marriage and routine existence is pulled out from under him, he is unable to find his way.
The play moves a little slowly and director Wilson Malam is a little too enamored of the blocking triangle. The first act is concerned almost solely with setting up the story, and the play doesn’t really take off until the second act. But when it does, the dominoes fall swiftly. The two peripheral characters, Steffi (Aya Cash) and Gordon (Brian J. Smith) are shrill and childish to the point of infuriation, but that’s the point—I wanted to strangle Gordon every time he opened his mouth, and that’s exactly the way it should be. The dark humor in Three Changes is nearly overwhelmed by its sorrow; the production would be better served with a lighter tone, but the creepy last scene (almost) makes up for that.
The payoff is slow in coming—Three Changes is best enjoyed after the fact, upon reflection, after the last scene and all the twists and turns have had a chance to sink in. While the first part of the play moves too gently for my taste, and the overall pace is entirely too leisurely, the acting is great and the last scene is well worth the wait. Nicky Silver is another playwright to watch.
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