Review of reviews: Stage

The American Plan

Old Globe Theatre, San Diego

(619) 238-0043

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Richard Greenberg’s 1990 play gives an old Henry James formula a new twist, said Bob Verini in Variety. In his novels, James expatriated his Gilded Age Americans to Europe, in order to illustrate their clashes with the Old World. Here Greenberg brings the Old World—in the form of an aristocratic Jewish-German widow named Eva—to the Catskills, circa 1960. Eva lives to cast her cultivated aspersions on the crass “lower life forms” who populate that resort area. One of them, a WASPy fish-out-of-water named Nick, has set his sights on her spirited daughter, Lili. The ensuing “wrestling match” of wills between mother and daughter plays like classic James, and reveals “touches of elegance not unworthy of the master himself.”

Unfortunately, the script too often suffers from “restless plot syndrome,” said Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times. Greenberg, who would go on to write the Tony-winning Take Me Out, overburdens this early work with too many petty conflicts. As a result, director Kim Rubinstein “can’t quite make sense of the convoluted action.” The actors fare somewhat better. Kate Arrington whines too much as Lili, yet she does a formidable job of capturing the character’s “wounded eccentricity.” Patrick Zeller hits on Nick’s double-sidedness and seductive appeal. Most important, Sandra Shipley gives a sharp performance as Eva, capturing her disdain for uncultivated excess and her constant need to tamp down Lili’s optimism. It’s a shame the relationships between these characters are both “overloaded and not very convincing.”