Both Your Houses

The third year of Asolo Rep’s exploration of the American Character focuses on money, power, and sex. Both Your Houses concentrates on the first two in a play that won author Maxwell Anderson a 1933 Pulitzer Prize and is just as pertinent today.

The title comes from curses made on Romeo and Juliet’s two fighting families, with images here of the U. S. Congress, especially a House of Representatives shown to represent its own interests above those of the country.

Elected by his Nebraska voters to get construction of a needed dam finished, newcomer Alan McClean (Tom Coiner, living up to that name) finds its financing excessive. He tries to get his committee to squash his own bill as a first step in an overall cleanup. Chairman Simeon Gray (David Breitbarth, solid, orderly, practical), who is characteristically trying to rid bills of non-necessities, would seem to be a natural ally. But will McClean want too much of him? Does he have something to hide?

Hard-drinking but incisive Solomon Fitzmaurice (Douglas Jones) admits to his self-interest and is realistic about what preserves the same for all the lawmakers. In Jones’s central performance, Solomon becomes the most likeable character, a contrast with the almost Goody Two Shoes McClean. Quite interesting, since all his colleagues--excepting, for the most part, Simeon and Carolyn Michel’s experienced lone woman who cares for children that an earmark can help--are roguish as can be.

There’s really little suspense over whether McClean overloading his bill with pork will kill or help it be passed. The lawmakers all act so much alike that a lack of opposition in committee to anything that benefits each hardly surprises. That doesn’t mean their interpreters’ performances aren’t good; it’s the characters they play who aren’t.

Two women who, typically, aren’t lawmakers stand out in the proceedings. Katie Cunningham’s Marjorie Gray is conflicted because she believes in her politico father. Gracie Lee Brown’s Bus Nillson abets McClean--after all, it’s a job--using her political smarts.

Though Both Your Houses isn’t a comedy, it contains a lot of it. Satire is its sub-genus. One-liners abound. Then there’s the deep absurdity about things added on to a bill about a dam. But is the ending, and the prediction made for the future, really happy?

Unfortunately, the play and production at Asolo Rep are falsely divided between presentational and representational styles. Both Your Houses is a realistic play, yet Frank Galati places all but McLean and Simeon in the committee room facing the audience. There is, then, a symbolic arrangement of Solomon in the center behind the long desk and the other two leads flanking what becomes a triangle. The other side of this room, however, shows a realistic office where people do not face the audience but rather face and talk to each other.