Susan Granger’s review of “Children” (Westport Country Playhouse)
Artistic Director Mark Lamos has the Westport Country Playhouse back on track with his second presentation of this transitional season, a revival of A.R. Gurney’s first play, “Children,” which was chosen by Lamos’ predecessors, Joanne Woodward and Anne Keefe. A perceptive family drama, suggested by John Cheever’s story, “Goodbye, My Brother,” it’s a harbinger of many subsequent Gurney satires centered on the contemporary angst and traditional repression of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families in the Northeast.
Set on Fourth of July weekend in the 1970s on the terrace of a large, old summer home on a resort island off the Massachusetts coast, it revolves around a wealthy 60ish widow (Judith Light) whose husband drowned five years ago. Her dysfunctional family dynamics are set in gear when she reveals she’s planning to marry a longtime family friend and to turn the house over to her three grown children. Recently divorced, caustic Barbara (Katie Finneran) has secretly taken up with a local’ and has visions of becoming a full-time islander. Prep-school coach Randy (James Waterston) is primarily concerned with maintaining the status quo, focusing on the tennis court, while his uptight wife Jane (Mary Bacon) is thrown into confusion when she finds she has developed affection and admiration for Miriam, the progressive-thinking Jewish wife of Pokey, the third and most troublesome of the lot. Pokey is pivotal, the rebellious, younger son who, like Godot, never really surfaces but influences everyone else’s behavior.
Deftly directed by John Tillinger, the acting ensemble hits all the right notes of their respective, if stereotypical forms of desperation, particularly elegant Judith Light (familiar as the Meade family matriarch on TV’s “Ugly Betty”), ultimately determined to maintain familial solidarity, and Katie Finneran, who reaches below the surface to access Barbara’s vulnerability. James Noone’s scenic design, Jane Greenwood’s costumes, Rui Tita’s lighting and Scott Killian’s music evoke the time, the place and the ambiance.
A must-see, “Children” plays at Westport Country Playhouse through June 13th.