David Rabe's latest play might be called Good for Otto but after sitting through the interminable three hours, I can assure you that what might be good for Otto is bad for everyone else in the theater.
I'll admit, I've groaned a time or two after hearing that a show is close to or over three hours long. I mean, the greatest words in the English language are "90 minutes, no intermission" but some of my favorite plays (Angels in America, Jerusalem, August: Osage County) are over 180 minutes. Would I like to be in and out and home before 10? Sure. But when the play is engaging and well-written, it doesn't matter. I'd sit through six hours of Jerusalem. The problem with Good for Otto is that it could be 90 minutes, and should be. Characters and passages could easily be cut and the play wouldn't suffer for it. The current incarnation of it on stage at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater tells me this play needed a bit more development, another workshop or two.
I guess when you're a Tony-winning playwright with a long, successful career and movie stars want to be in your play, it doesn't really matter.
The whole thing focuses on two psychiatrists at a mental health facility that is fighting to stay open and continue to help people despite struggling with the bureaucratic hoops they must jump through to make money. We begin our journey with Dr. Michaels, who has frequent and intrusive asides to the audience, musical interludes (he admits to fantasizing about having all of his patients join in on musical numbers), and an unwelcome dead mother who may be a ghost or just a manifestation of his guilt over her suicide when he was nine. Dr. Michaels has patients, many of them, and we get to see session after session with them over the course of the play. One is a mother who is dealing with the suicide of her son; while the writing is lovely in this early portion of the play, the character's story is never revisited. She, and her dead son, can be excised at no consequence to the rest of the action. Another patient is Jerome, a stereotypical hoarder, and his mother, arguing over the boxes that he can't manage to make sense of in order to move from an upstairs bedroom to the basement of his mother's house. Jerome, played by Kenny Mellman who also write the score of the play and plays piano throughout, seems only to exist for comedic relief. His story is never revisited again either, and it would've been okay to just have Mellman provide the music. Another, whose sessions provide the closest thing to a conflict the play possesses, is Frannie, a self-harming twelve year old whose outbursts have her foster mother at her breaking point. Dr. Michaels finds himself obsessed with Frannie's case, and can't get her out of his head, literally.
But then, midway through the first act, we are thrown into the sessions of Evangeline, another psychiatrist, and her patients. And even though this is supposed to be Dr. Michaels' play, Evangeline is the one with the more interesting and arresting patients. The ones we stay with throughout the evening, and ultimately the ones who stayed with me after the play. The standout for me was Timothy, played perfectly by Mark Linn-Baker, an autistic adult trying to understand the proper ways to interact with people. Linn-Baker is able to make his character three dimensional, and rise above Scott Eliot's direction to create a real human being. (Maulik Pancholy as Alex, a lonely closeted gay man, comes the closest to Linn-Baker but the character isn't introduced until the second act, for some reason. As if Rabe needed to introduce yet another character.) There's also Bernard, a retiree too depressed to get out of bed, played expertly by F. Murray Abraham. Abraham's performance is wonderful but the material wasn't compelling enough to hold my attention. And for what it's worth, Bernard is the only patient of either psychiatrist to receive any closure.
Good for Otto is an actor's play. I'm sure it is fun for all of these great actors to perform these monologues but they're not fun for the audience to sit through. These are acting exercises. I know Rabe based this play on an existing book but trying to write a play around a therapist's office is Playwriting 101. We've all tried to do it. I surely have, and then I realized, "this isn't interesting. Where's the drama?" That's the thing, there isn't. We get glimpses of Dr. Michaels fighting for his patients' care but it doesn't go deep enough. The ending, when Evangeline confesses that she's in love with her patients, comes off cheaply because I really didn't buy it. We don't know anything about her, we never see her outside of sessions.
But oh, we spend enough time with Dr. Michaels. He has a bit more development; we know he spends his down time getting together with friends and singing old songs, we know his age and birthday, and we know all about his long-dead mother. Oh, we know all about her. Having Charlotte Hope play his dead mom is an intrusive and obnoxious gimmick, that is an incredibly cheap cliche. Rabe is trying to explain to us how Dr. Michaels became who he is, why he must want to help these people, but Hope isn't a good enough actress to overcome the cheesy writing with which she is saddled. I started to cringe whenever I saw her on stage. I mean, I get it; he couldn't save his mother so he has to save these other people. But did Rabe have to be so obvious and cliched about it? There had to be a better device than mother dead by suicide. And quite frankly, I would've accepted that the doctor just wanted to help people without making dead mom a character. Some people can just be good, they could just want to do good in the world. (Perhaps that's Evangeline's MO. I wouldn't know, she has no development.)
So what could be done? Cut a patient or two or four. Cut the mom character. Streamline the asides that break the fourth wall. Quicken the pace. And please, can we make Evangline an actual human being?
I'll admit, I've groaned a time or two after hearing that a show is close to or over three hours long. I mean, the greatest words in the English language are "90 minutes, no intermission" but some of my favorite plays (Angels in America, Jerusalem, August: Osage County) are over 180 minutes. Would I like to be in and out and home before 10? Sure. But when the play is engaging and well-written, it doesn't matter. I'd sit through six hours of Jerusalem. The problem with Good for Otto is that it could be 90 minutes, and should be. Characters and passages could easily be cut and the play wouldn't suffer for it. The current incarnation of it on stage at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater tells me this play needed a bit more development, another workshop or two.
I guess when you're a Tony-winning playwright with a long, successful career and movie stars want to be in your play, it doesn't really matter.
The whole thing focuses on two psychiatrists at a mental health facility that is fighting to stay open and continue to help people despite struggling with the bureaucratic hoops they must jump through to make money. We begin our journey with Dr. Michaels, who has frequent and intrusive asides to the audience, musical interludes (he admits to fantasizing about having all of his patients join in on musical numbers), and an unwelcome dead mother who may be a ghost or just a manifestation of his guilt over her suicide when he was nine. Dr. Michaels has patients, many of them, and we get to see session after session with them over the course of the play. One is a mother who is dealing with the suicide of her son; while the writing is lovely in this early portion of the play, the character's story is never revisited. She, and her dead son, can be excised at no consequence to the rest of the action. Another patient is Jerome, a stereotypical hoarder, and his mother, arguing over the boxes that he can't manage to make sense of in order to move from an upstairs bedroom to the basement of his mother's house. Jerome, played by Kenny Mellman who also write the score of the play and plays piano throughout, seems only to exist for comedic relief. His story is never revisited again either, and it would've been okay to just have Mellman provide the music. Another, whose sessions provide the closest thing to a conflict the play possesses, is Frannie, a self-harming twelve year old whose outbursts have her foster mother at her breaking point. Dr. Michaels finds himself obsessed with Frannie's case, and can't get her out of his head, literally.
But then, midway through the first act, we are thrown into the sessions of Evangeline, another psychiatrist, and her patients. And even though this is supposed to be Dr. Michaels' play, Evangeline is the one with the more interesting and arresting patients. The ones we stay with throughout the evening, and ultimately the ones who stayed with me after the play. The standout for me was Timothy, played perfectly by Mark Linn-Baker, an autistic adult trying to understand the proper ways to interact with people. Linn-Baker is able to make his character three dimensional, and rise above Scott Eliot's direction to create a real human being. (Maulik Pancholy as Alex, a lonely closeted gay man, comes the closest to Linn-Baker but the character isn't introduced until the second act, for some reason. As if Rabe needed to introduce yet another character.) There's also Bernard, a retiree too depressed to get out of bed, played expertly by F. Murray Abraham. Abraham's performance is wonderful but the material wasn't compelling enough to hold my attention. And for what it's worth, Bernard is the only patient of either psychiatrist to receive any closure.
Good for Otto is an actor's play. I'm sure it is fun for all of these great actors to perform these monologues but they're not fun for the audience to sit through. These are acting exercises. I know Rabe based this play on an existing book but trying to write a play around a therapist's office is Playwriting 101. We've all tried to do it. I surely have, and then I realized, "this isn't interesting. Where's the drama?" That's the thing, there isn't. We get glimpses of Dr. Michaels fighting for his patients' care but it doesn't go deep enough. The ending, when Evangeline confesses that she's in love with her patients, comes off cheaply because I really didn't buy it. We don't know anything about her, we never see her outside of sessions.
But oh, we spend enough time with Dr. Michaels. He has a bit more development; we know he spends his down time getting together with friends and singing old songs, we know his age and birthday, and we know all about his long-dead mother. Oh, we know all about her. Having Charlotte Hope play his dead mom is an intrusive and obnoxious gimmick, that is an incredibly cheap cliche. Rabe is trying to explain to us how Dr. Michaels became who he is, why he must want to help these people, but Hope isn't a good enough actress to overcome the cheesy writing with which she is saddled. I started to cringe whenever I saw her on stage. I mean, I get it; he couldn't save his mother so he has to save these other people. But did Rabe have to be so obvious and cliched about it? There had to be a better device than mother dead by suicide. And quite frankly, I would've accepted that the doctor just wanted to help people without making dead mom a character. Some people can just be good, they could just want to do good in the world. (Perhaps that's Evangeline's MO. I wouldn't know, she has no development.)
So what could be done? Cut a patient or two or four. Cut the mom character. Streamline the asides that break the fourth wall. Quicken the pace. And please, can we make Evangline an actual human being?
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