Detroit by Lisa D'Amour is a dysfunctional play about two dysfunctional couples living in a dysfunctional community that is not Detroit. The piece is well directed by Anne Kauffman who tries to guide the able cast through a story that leaves one wondering about the point of the play.
The story revolves around two couples who are by chance neighbors. Mary (Amy Ryan) and Ben (David Schwimmer) own the house in which they live, and their new neighbors Sharon (Sarah Sokolovic) and Kenny (Darren Pettie) turn out to have just moved into the house next door. Apparently they are renting from Kenny's great uncle Frank (John Cullum).
The house next door was owned by Kenny’s great-aunt who had recently died. Mary has invited the new neighbors over to the backyard for some lemonade and iced tea to welcome them to the neighborhood. Over the course of the conversation, each learns what the others do for a living, and we discover that Ben has just been fired from his job as a financial advisor in a bank.
Mary is a therapist. Kenny works in a warehouse, and Sharon is a telephone customer support person for a services company. People from different worlds are thrown together by the perversity of chance and, as time goes by, the nature of the relationship becomes problematic to the point of becoming incendiary.
All of the performances are well done, with Sarah Sokolovic being the best and also someone to pay attention to in future productions. Her performance, last season, as Betty in The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, a very good but overlooked play, was brilliant. John Cullum gives a good turn as the "end game" narrator, pulling all the loose threads of the preceding action together in an attempt to bring meaning to the dysfunctional.
The sets by Louisa Thompson are well designed and allow for effective and ingenious scene changes including an incredible moment near the end of the play when things quite literally "go to hell" – or at least an earthly facsimile of such.
Mark Barton’s lighting is very effective given the constraints of the theater space. Kaye Voyce's costume design effectively conveys the changes in the characters’ self-image as the nature of the relationships move from more formal to the very casual.
The main issue with this play is that the characters don't make an emotional connection to the audience. Do we care about these people and the circumstances that brought them together? The cast work hard, but ultimately, the strength of the material must make it happen, and it doesn't in this one: good acting in the service of an I-don't-care play.
