Nuclear Family
And with new drywall came a new sense of artistic courage. For despite the extraordinary skill on display in White Trash Wedding, a show so well crafted that only the overused comparison to a gem is appropriate, Factory didn’t seem to be aiming much higher than the groin. The company remained, in the words of Factory member Sean Abley, the House of Screaming Equals Funny. But with his new play Nuclear Family, Abley has rocketed his company into the stratosphere of serious theater, and has done so without sacrificing the juvenile excess that has made Factory’s best work so intoxicating.
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In other words, Nuclear Family doesn’t look much like a serious play, and may well be dismissed out of hand by those who think real drama must remain stiff and somber as a Victorian drawing room. The play opens in the wee hours of the morning, as thirtysomething Mike stumbles into his mother’s house, drunk from airline cocktails, dragging along Howard, a trick he met on the plane. Soon Howard is groping in Mike’s pants, and suddenly Mike’s mother Henrietta, called Hank, bursts into the room, brandishing a gun. Of course, we all think we know what will happen next: Mike will be mortified, Hank will be scandalized, a long, tense silence will be broken by a seemingly pedestrian comment from Hank (something like, “Your flight got in late?”) meant to dramatize her habit of denying unpleasant realities, and yet another play about the blindered American nuclear family will begin.
And this mother isn’t the same alcoholic, gutter-mouthed mother from White Trash Wedding, either. In fact, Hank is one of the most pathetic and arresting characters on any stage this year, thanks not only to Abley’s skillful writing but to Marssie Mencotti’s mesmerizing performance. While on the surface she seems to have little to do except feed her kids beer and cuss like a sailor, she is in fact on a sobering mission: to prevent her children from achieving any degree of success. Mike and Ronnie, who show some promise, threaten her sense of inebriated complacency, and she does everything in her power to paralyze them. At the same time, she dotes on Gary, with a disturbing level of physical intimacy, because he is a drunken sot destined for failure, just like her. Dragging her kids down to her level is the only way she can avoid the pain of recognizing her own wasted life.
If the result feels altogether too entertaining to be taken seriously, perhaps Abley is still aiming a bit low at times. But perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new theatrical form, one which will require some getting used to before we can appreciate its importance.
