There are smart drunks and stupid drunks. Smart drunks are like the guys in Long Day’s Journey Into Night: Edmund Tyrone regaling his father with memories of a mystical experience on board ship, or Jamie Tyrone admitting that he wants his younger brother to fail, so that his own botched life won’t feel so painful. The more they imbibe, the more articulate and honest they become.
Smart drunks make good drama.
And then there’s the other type — the young women and men of Adam Bock’s The Drunken City, the exasperating, low-IQ excuse for a play currently showing at Gorilla Theatre. These are stupid drunks: The alcohol has washed out their memory of any vaguely interesting experiences, they repeat themselves endlessly, they take an hour to realize what the audience noticed after two minutes, and, at their best, they just express platitudes so already-obvious to any thinking human, it’s a wonder they’re old enough to have drivers’ licenses, much less jobs. Yes, these mindless simps are supposed to be twentysomething, but watching them is more like overhearing 9-year-olds discuss Proust: they haven’t read it, they wouldn’t understand it, and in any case, they don’t have much access to discursive language. What’s astonishing about this play isn’t that it poured out of someone’s printer, but that Gorilla — or any theater — chose to produce it. There must be a thousand better scripts out there, in New York and the regional theaters, waiting for the attention of artistic directors eager to please hungry audiences. But somehow we got The Drunken City, a 90-minute wasteland that makes network television look Einsteinian, and Sex and the City like quantum physics. After 11 years of reviewing theater, I can think of only one or two other plays with less to offer.
The plot: Three friends, Linda, Melissa and Marnie, are out in New York City celebrating Marnie’s engagement. They meet three men, Eddie, Frank and Bob. Frank and Marnie hit it off, and he helps her question her resolve to get married. Bob and Eddie hit it off, and awkwardly dance around their attraction. Marnie decides; so do Bob and Eddie. Then the play is over.
Now this could be the plot of a wonderful comedy, maybe an incisive satire about the mating rituals of young Americans. Just imagine what Paul Rudnick or Suzan Lori-Parks would do with this opportunity.
Well, forget it. Bock seems to have no ideas about the subjects he introduces, and his dialogue is so simplistic, it makes his characters seem like dopes. In 90 minutes of theater, there’s hardly a single original thought or memorable phrase.
And impassioned acting and fine direction can’t turn this into a silk purse. As the three woman friends, Betty-Jane Parks (Linda), Jannette Serckpor (Melissa) and Jaime Giangrande-Holcom (Marnie) do their utmost to make The Drunken City stageworthy, as do Curtis Belz (Frank), Patrick Bolger (Eddie) and Kyle Porter (Bob). Karla Hartley directs, and if anyone could save this show, it would be this gifted stage artist. She can’t. Scott Cooper’s minimalist set — a metallic wall with two windows in it — could support a splendid narrative (not this one), and the see-sawing floor must have seemed like an inspiration (it gets old fast). A play like this gives even drinking a bad name. More shows like this and we’ll be clamoring for Prohibition.
(One counter-note: the character Linda does have a few haunting, short monologues about the City being a dangerous monster. At these moments, it appears that author Bock can really write. But add them all up and there’s probably less than two minutes’ worth. That leaves 88 minutes of pablum.)
Fortunately, this isn’t part of a trend: Next in line at the Gorilla is Jean Anouilh’s beautiful, intelligent Joan of Arc play, The Lark. Of course, I can’t guess what quality of production it will receive, but, as a fan of the text, I can already tell you this: It’ll outplay this clunker by miles. It’ll stimulate emotions this one doesn’t touch. It’ll even give us something to think about.
The Drunken City is certainly the worst play so far of the 2009-2010 season.
If we’re lucky, it’s all smooth sailing from here.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.
