Connecticut Theater

"Children"
Westport Country Playhouse, Westport

Playwright A. R. Gurney and director John Tillinger have combined their considerable skills to focus on “Children,” now at the Westport Country Playhouse. But this sure-fire combination does not create the hoped-for magic, at least not this time around.

For starters, “Children” never measures up to the best of Gurney plays. In those plays, as he examines survival in the WASP world, his unique voice combines playfulness, humor and painful revelations. Though the WASPS maybe a dying species, theirs is the world of country clubs, tennis courts, cocktail hours. And also rueful memories, divorces, alcoholism. Such are the intriguing, contradictory Gurney people—a people he views with affection, but with sharp criticism.

This time, however, the tale of one disturbed WASP family remains muddy and trivial. One cannot help but compare “Children” to Horton Foote’s “Dividing the Estate,” also currently on the boards (at Hartford Stage). Both plays deal with an aging, tyrannical  matriarch (a widow) and her three children (plus their assorted mates and children). Both focus on the ancestral home and the children’s battle for each one’s share of the pie. Will the estate be divided? Will the home be sold? Both clans are class-conscious, placing themselves high on the social ladder. Though one family is a product of the Deep South and the other New England, they are amazingly similar.

The comparison is unfortunate, because Foote has created a far better piece—and his family’s struggle is epic, not trivial. Each Foote character rings true and every word spoken is on target.

“Children,” on the other hand, falters. Though this Gurney tale certainly has its dark underpinnings, its desperation, one is hard put to take this family seriously. The family has gathered at the summer beach cottage off the coast of Massachusetts. (It is a large rambling home that might command seven figures in the real estate market.) The matriarch has assembled her children to announce that she is marrying “Uncle Bill” (her long-time lover) and must perforce (according to the law) relinquish her home to the children. Faced with this knowledge, the children—Barbara, Randy, and Pokey—reveal their conflicting needs.

And here Gurney succumbs to a playwright’s gimmick (a device that can be intriguing). Pokey (the play’s most important character) is never seen. He is always off-stage (within the house, on the tennis court, at the dock), but wields his power relentlessly. Yet one never gets a sense of what Pokey is about. The other children, Randy and Barbara, are defined as adolescent, self-centered, spoiled--and  beautifully portrayed by James Waterston and Katie Finneran. Mary Bacon, as Randy’s wife, also gives an appealing, poignant performance as she grows from a meek adolescent to an outspoken rebel.

The great disappointment of this effort is the casting of the matriarch. Judith Light, called upon to play the mother, delivers her lines in robotic style.  Though no doubt she attempts to create a repressed WASP, her portrayal comes off as awkward, amateurish, and, above all, wooden—a choice which may be due to director Tillinger or Light herself.

All told, this “Children” is not the best of Gurney or Tillinger efforts.

-- Irene Backalenick
June 4, 2009