In Neil LaBute's In a Dark Dark House, a disbarred lawyer doing time in a comfortable, substance-abuse rehab center has summoned his underemployed brother for a favor. A therapist suspects that Drew's adult troubles are rooted in events from childhood involving an ostensibly friendly handyman his older brother had cautioned him about. Drew, the ex-lawyer, wants the scuffling Terry to confirm the story to the shrink and hasten his release.
Don't even think about a simple yes or no answer. Terry's first line a few minutes ago the first of the play -- as he came upon his apparently suicidal brother? "Go for it."
Nothing is simple in the tortuous tale from LaBute now getting a handsome production at Mosaic Theater in South Florida. Sibling rivalry, dysfunctional family life, long-held grudges (the brothers now are in their 30s), secrets old and new all rise and fall in a play that may suffer from too many twists at its end.
Not helping are some long pauses scattered throughout. Is it the characters searching for the right phrase, or is it the actors? The silences are long enough that the audience has time to wonder. Nevertheless, Terry Hardcastle as Terry, who's in all three scenes, and Ricky Waugh as Drew combine for some fine moments of conflict. And Hardcastle and Miriam Wiener, as a flirtatious 16-year-old, deliver an impressive LaBute scene that's disturbing for an audience that will be imagining consequences the teenager Jennifer clearly isn't.
Also impressive is the set by Sean McClelland. It delivers on several levels, and not merely physically. Its main playing level is the rehab center's expansive lawn with its big trees. A lower level is part of the miniature golf course for the Terry-and-Jennifer encounter: Tap the ball on the upper level and it spins out below.
Looming above those playing areas, though, is the tree house the handyman made for the boys when they were about 12. It's shown from a bird's eye view. There are suspended chairs on what is supposed to be the ground below. The tree house is held in a clutch of insinuating branches. There's an entrance hole cut into the floor. And just barely visible in a corner of that hole is a ladder, somehow ominous in its mere suggestion.
