Celebrate Good Times!

Review of Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks

Fairly early in Matthew López’s Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, now playing at TheaterWorks in Hartford directed by Rob Ruggiero, Rachel, a drunken wedding planner who was not hired to plan—nor asked to be a bridesmaid at—the wedding of Zoey, a “best friend” from college, sounds off on a live mic. She wants us to know that elaborate weddings, no matter how well planned and “perfect,” do not equate with a happy marriage. She insists that more effort should be put into marriages, not weddings. It’s a tirade that is aimed, we don’t doubt, at the state of her own marriage, but it also might make us wonder: if weddings do indeed get too much attention, why play out the all-too-familiar tropes of big wedding receptions in a new play?

The answer, I suppose, is that we’re all ready to be amused by what can go wrong. Will we be embarrassed, titillated, angered, made to cringe or squirm, forced to laugh or cry or to drink heavily? Certainly that and more happens to all the characters we meet. More—who we don’t see—are potentially even more put out.

Blair Lewin as Rachel in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding by Matthew López, at TheaterWorks, Hartford, directed by Rob Ruggiero (photo by Mike Marques)

We meet six people at this 200-person reception: Zoey’s friend Rachel (Blair Lewin); Rachel’s husband Charlie (Daniel José Molina, but on the night I saw it played by understudy Stephen Stocking); Sammy (Hunter Ryan Hedlicka), their gay friend from college, all seated at and grousing about their table far from the main table, though—as they come to appreciate—near a neglected bar presided over by a bartender Sam thinks is hot. Then there’s the DJ (Esteban Carmona), surly about the fact that his musical tastes and the bride’s don’t match; the first-time wedding planner, Missy (Hallie Eliza Friedman), a cousin of the bride who is very much out of her depth, and eventually the bride herself, Zoey (Rachel B. Joyce).

López keeps the funny lines flowing in the early going, with wisecracks that land well from an able cast. I was so taken with the repartee I was beginning to suspect we’d meet a table full of mixed couples who would be outing and dissing each other and catching up on sequels to their lives in the 1980s. It’s like we’re eavesdroppers at the table and that’s appealing, hearing the dirt and the gripes and the envy and the drinking challenges and so on.

Esteban Carmona as DJ, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Sammy, Blair Lewin as Rachel, Daniel José Molina as Charlie in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

It’s 2008 now and this age group is having to adjust to being grownups. Sammy’s partner has been invited to DC to serve in the Obama administration, so we get table chat that includes references to Sarah Palin and W. and the economic crash. Not enough to make a strong point about the generation we’re viewing, though the music on the soundtrack will treat many audience members to nostalgic twinges, I’m sure.

Lopez writes gay characters well and Sammy is the one with the more interesting things to say, as when he upbraids Charlie for not having sex with Rachel for six months. Sammy’s disquisition on same-sex coupling’s greater difficulties compared to hetero-sex makes a point and Herdlicka’s manner makes it comical. And that’s where López’s script is at its best, trying to account for how lust, love, desire and romance and their lack surface in different ways in different people.

Hallie Eliza Friedman as Missy, Esteban Carmona as DJ in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

The parts of the play that worked less well for me were all about the wedding itself, most having to do with predicaments referred to more than witnessed. The hapless party planner isn’t that great a gag; the DJ, who is at first fractious, actually becomes, thanks to Carmona’s casual cool, a welcome perspective; Sam fades, but for his heroic credit card, and Charlie goes from possibly a foil to one of those guys who thinks he and his alienated wife can “fuck it out.” At times, we might feel the use of sturdy cliché is beneath López and beneath at least some of the audience: straight couples not having sex after a few years of marriage; gay couples having sex as much as is humanly possible; straight-laced women eager to get high with a bad boy, etc.

Rachel B. Joyce as Zoey (foreground), Blair Lewin as Rachel, Hallie Eliza Friedman as Missy (background) in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

And then there’s Zoey: I believe that Rachel B. Joyce incarnates the character perfectly, a woman who really did fantasize a perfect wedding from an early age, never mind a perfect marriage. She’s silly, preening, and the sort of person you’d rather not be trapped near at an event. Her best bit—and probably the play’s most memorable theatrical moment—finds her and Rachel sitting on the floor of the ladies room licking chocolate cake off her gorgeous wedding gown.

The best role is Rachel’s, more or less, and in the end she’s the one who seems to have the furthest to go to find some notion of happiness. Seeing Rachel become a saving grace—after the belligerent salvos in her toast—is one of those turn-arounds that doesn’t make much difference. The night I saw the show, at least a few in the audience seemed to feel an implied potential seduction of Charlie by Sammy, in the hotel room Charlie rented intending a sexy frolic with Rachel. Now that might have made Zoey’s wedding an affair to remember!

Daniel José Molina as Charlie, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Sammy in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

We all know wedding receptions can be awkward, corny, nostalgic, romantic, silly, maybe even sublime—if you’re easily impressed. But mainly they tend to show that, when it comes to showbiz, we’re all amateurs. Generally, everyone tries to put a good face on whatever is happening so as not to ruin someone else’s big day. That’s not the case here, as a “good face” rarely shows itself. And so audiences will have to decide how much fun it is to be witness to the fiasco, from bad playlists to delayed (and too few) dinner servings, to mishaps with “cake shoving,” smartphone mix-ups, thrown food, tequila belted from the bottle, and true-confession moments about both same-sex and mixed-sex couplings, and, hanging over it all, what it means to pair up and to make a public celebration of it.

I suppose you could say that Zoey’s Perfect Wedding is a bit like any party—if you don’t have high expectations, you won’t be as disappointed, and if you can look on the bright side—the laughs, the chat, maybe the music—you might even enjoy it more than you don’t.

Esteban Carmona as DJ in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding
By Matthew López
Directed by Rob Ruggiero

Set and Lighting Design: Brian Sidney Bembridge; Costume Design: Harry Nadal; Sound Design: Melanie Chen Cole; Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert

Cast: Esteban Carmona, Hallie Eliza Friedman, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka, Rachel B. Joyce, Blair Lewin, Daniel José Molina

TheaterWorks
April 30-June 5, 2022

Strangers in the Night

Review of Reverberation at Hartford Stage

Reverberation, the new play by Matthew Lopez now playing at Hartford Stage, directed by Maxwell Williams, presents a story of coping with trauma. It’s been a year since a terrible thing happened in the life of Jonathan (Luke Macfarlane), an illustrator of condolence cards, who has been living in the same apartment building in Astoria for 15 years. In fact, he lived for all but the last year with his partner Gabriel in the apartment above his current domicile. The change in apartments was his first act in trying to cope.

Claire (Aya Cash),  Jonathan (Luke Macfarlane)

We learn this before the end of the Act I, but when we first meet him, Jonathan seems merely a withdrawn loner. He hates leaving his apartment after dark and his only contact with others comes via down-and-dirty hook-ups via Grindr (an app for males prowling for other males). The play opens in medias res—in the midst of intense coupling between Jonathan and a younger man, Wes (Carl Lundstedt). Wes is more or less blown away by the sex and actually tries to be sincere about it afterwards. Jonathan just wants him out of there.

Wes (Carl Lundstedt) and Jonathan (Luke Macfarlane)

Next, Jonathan similarly blows off his upstairs neighbor, Claire (Aya Cash), a female gadabout in her late twenties. Claire, who rightly claims she’s “barely domesticated,” leads what seems a party-girl lifestyle. About the only things she owns are an inflatable mattress, a tube TV, a camp chair and, most importantly, a clothes-rack full of designer stuff—and when she really needs something high end, she “borrows” it from the department store where she works. A need for help with a zipper on one such to-die-for dress is what first sends her to Jonathan’s apartment where she doesn’t attempt to seduce him so much as attempt to induce sex. It gets awkward fast and soon she’s out the door and Jonathan is onto his next anonymous coupling.

Of course, this is going to be about how getting to know the girl next door turns things around for this guy, at least for that lonely time of year, from pre-Thanksgiving to just before Christmas, that occupies the play. By the end of Act I, after he spills to her the horrible hate-crime killing of his lover Gabriel, Jonathan and Claire are actually sleeping together—just sleeping. It’s sweet, and that’s what Claire thinks Jonathan is. He knows better, and tries to warn her. The question hanging in the air at the end of Act I is: is this a play about redemption through connection, as a gay man learns to overcome a traumatic event that cost him the love of his life, or is it about how the dark side can destroy even the best of provisional buddies?

Claire (Aya Cash) and Jonathan (Luke Macfarlane)

When Act II opens we feel like we’re in some zippy rom-com where Jonathan becomes more or less a mothering “girlfriend” to mostly friendless Claire—her only contacts apart from Jonathan, despite her age, appearance, and keen fashion sense, are married men who take her out and then expect to bed her. Life for these urban anyones is all about quid pro quo sex acts until Claire and Jonathan begin to care for each other because they get to know each other—and a dreamy Christmas in a cabin in Vermont is, no lie, what they have in mind for a getaway. And we may be hoping that’s where Lopez wants to take us, showing how “two lonely people, strangers in the night” can share a dance and a kiss and flirt with the notion that they can be in love with each other and not be lovers. Sure.

Jonathan (Luke Macfarlane) and Claire (Aya Cash)

Off-stage is a “Real Real Boy” who seems the kind of Gentleman Caller our Claire has been awaiting all this time, though we might suspect she’s also been dodging such in her knocking about with dealers—cards in Vegas, drugs in L.A.—as well as time in Paris and London, to say nothing of “way too long” in Orlando. In other words, Claire keeps on the move, and when she stands up Real Real Boy, it echoes the story Wes, who returns to Jonathan, fatefully, to try once more, tells about the reason he was on Grindr in the first place: he got stood up by friends on his birthday. Lopez’s characters are the people romantic comedies are never about. They’re the people who know that relationships don’t work out or that, when they do, someone comes along and bashes it.

Luke Macfarlane as Jonathan in Reverberation

I’ve stressed the importance of trauma in the character of Jonathan because it’s easy to be fooled by his coping mechanisms. And everything he does is a coping mechanism. Somewhere underneath it all—the hiding and the warmth—is a very, very raw nerve ready to snap. Macfarlane plays Jonathan quite believably as the sort of guy who is wrapped so tightly he’s a mystery even to himself. Early on, a clichéd phonecall from Mom and Dad, anxious about whether he’s coming home for Thanksgiving, could have been used to give us something more than irked refusals to share, but, even so, Macfarlane lets body language and very neutral tones tell us a lot more than his words do, as we spy upon this man.

And looking on as voyeurs is key to the theatrical experience here. Andromache Chalfant’s amazingly detailed set creates two completely different spaces: the Spartan look of Claire’s contrasts the lived-in clutter—complete with huge paintings by the late Gabriel on every available wall—of Jonathan’s space. And Matthew Richards’ lighting acts almost like another character or at least a narrator. We see how eerie the dark spaces can be at night, as Jonathan’s nightmares make him call into uncertain shadows in his own apartment and the darkness above in Claire’s, while morning light makes everything feel homey and communal. The stairs outside the apartments' doors also plays its part, not simply as connection between two floors and, initially, two worlds, but also as a space of impromptu encounters. Williams’ direction and the set design make great use of open and closed doors.

Claire (Aya Cash) and Jonathan (Luke Macfarlane)

As Claire, Aya Cash doesn’t play to the Holly Golightly or Sally Bowles comparisons one might be tempted to make; she’s not a loveable kook nor a sly charmer. She’s just an average youngish woman who considers herself too ordinary to expect anything extraordinary from life. Lopez wisely keeps her from ever becoming a succoring figure in the relationship, a fact that’s important to the play’s ending. And as Wes, Carl Lundstedt plays with perfect pitch the hardest scene of all: a smitten lover trying to be real rather than charming or clever or sexy.

Wes (Carl Lundstedt), Jonathan (Luke Macfarlane)

Reverberation is a sensitive and provocative play, often entertaining in its speech rhythms and interactions, fun to watch in its use of movement and space and light, and full of the cadences of people dropping their façades and picking them up again. Even the lines that don’t quite work—there’s a particularly egregious use of the “sympathy card” idea at a key point—are within the realm of what these characters might attempt for a laugh or a stab at depth or as avoidance. Elements such as the right song at the wrong time may seem heavy as “triggers,” and the play’s dramatic outcome too sudden, but the final tableau takes us and Jonathan back to where he’s been all along.

Reverberation
By Matthew Lopez
Directed by Maxwell Williams

Set Design: Andromache Chalfont; Costume Design: Linda Cho; Lighting Design: Matthew Richards; Sound Design: Tei Blow; Dramaturg: Elizabeth Williamson; Stage Manager: Marisa Levy; Assistant Stage Manager: Arielle Goldstein; Assistant Director: Sarah Hartman; Production Assistant: Chandalae Nyswonger

Hartford Stage, February 19-March 15, 2015