Grand Horizons
Tickets from $59 Buy Tickets
Cititour.com Review
“Love and marriage. Love and marriage. Goes together like a horse and carriage.”
Frank Sinatra might have sung those now-immortal words, but the very talented playwright Bess Wohl takes issue with those lyrics in her very funny and often trenchant new play “Grand Horizons,” now being presented by Second Stage at the Helen Hayes Theater.
“I do realize that’s what marriage is: a contract to be tied to each other’s stupidity. But I don’t think what’s love is,” says Nancy (the absolutely extraordinary Jane Alexander, offering a master class in acting), a unsatisfied wife who has made a drastic decision after 50 years of not-so-happy matrimony: asking her seemingly equally unhappy husband Bill (a wonderful James Cromwell) for a divorce and kicking him out of the cookie-cutter independent living facility home (designed by the great Clint Ramos) they now share.
Nancy’s request certainly feels sudden to everyone around her, especially to her grown children, the emotionally stunted lawyer Ben (TV star Ben McKenzie in a fine Broadway debut) – embroiled in his own slightly troubled marriage to his very pregnant, very hormonal wife Jess (an excellent Ashley Park), a psychotherapist with her own set of gripes – and his younger brother Brian (a typically superb Michael Urie), a gay drama teacher who descends into passive-aggressive and ultra-neurotic behavior upon learning about his parents’ split. (Why else would any gay man try to bring a bar pick-up, here played gamely by Maulik Pancholy back to one’s parents’ house?)
But Nancy has her reasons for wanting out, some of them long-brewing: she’s never felt sexually satisfied by Bill; she’s still pining for her high-school-sweetheart (with whom she had periodic – and much happier -- adult liaisons); and, somehow, she’s suddenly become aware of her lack of her own identity (which she now hopes to find by starting a clothing drive for foreign refugees),
And, yes, there is the fact that Bill is having some sort of affair with Carla (the delightful Priscilla Lopez), a colorful former receptionist whom he met while taking a class in stand-up comedy. (That twist admittedly seems a little out of character for Bill, but Cromwell runs with it, even delivering a fairly filthy joke about nuns in heaven!)
For all of its up-to-date dramatic complications, Wohl has penned a fairly old-fashioned and conventional work with plenty of sitcom-like situations and the kind of zingy one-liners you’d expect from Neil Simon. It’s all a far cry, for better and worse, than some of her previous, darker-tinged works including “Make Believe” and “Small Mouth Sounds.”
Indeed, I suspect most audiences will be happier with this work, primarily because, Wohl has written extremely recognizable characters we can all identify with, each one brought wondrously to life under Leigh Silverman’s deft direction.
Ain’t love grand? Well, not always as “Grand Horizons” reminds us; but it’s definitely worth fighting for!
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
https://2st.com/shows/grand-horizons
Open/Close Dates
Opening 1/23/2020
Closing Open-ended
Theatre Info
Hayes Theatre
240 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
Comments
Sign up for our newsletter !