Its title has lately brought the curious to the play Straight White Men as if it’s something new and daring. It’s mainly, though, a pretentiously melded lot of old stuff. At a Christmastime family reunion, a widowed traditional father hosts three sons. Each is in some way dysfunctional. That they are straight and white is not of basic import to their dramatic interaction. Not even to the world outside their father’s house. After loud, pounding music, Persons in Charge I and 2 (Sandra Caldwell and JP Moraga) appear to represent non-straight and non-white women and those who identify as other-gender-wise. Author Young Jean Lee has them present the titled S.W.M. at the start of each scene of the extended one-act whole. She seems to have wanted them to impart an overall non-realistic approach to what is actually a realistic, almost naturalistic drama. This, despite many comic moments and much dialogue spoken directly to us in the audience. As a curtain of silver icicles parts, within a picture-framed family living room, Jake devotes himself to an X-box game. He’s the youngest guy, a successful banker, divorced from an African-American woman, father of their children. It’s a credit to Justin Adams that Jake’s likeable. This, though he tries to take over all the proceedings and prove admirable by denouncing the very SWM privilege that’s helped materialistic Jake in business. Do we buy what he tries to sell? Drew, a successful novelist and teacher, crashes onto Jake in the first bit of constant, sometimes violent family horseplay. Matt Koenig’s brings in “Privilege,” their childhood doctored edition of Monopoly, to play. We learn it’s a significant game and may well ask later: how well does it fit in with Drew’s emphasis on the power of therapy? Phillip Clark comes off as if made for the role of the father Ed, proud of his accomplishments in an engineering career, but mostly as husband, father, maintainer of this home and active in his community. Clark gives Ed some personal charm, even though he’s the most stereotypical character in the play. Will the emotional surface Ed sports hold up? Oldest brother Matt (Jess Prichard, carrying the play’s weight well) began as the smartest, most educated, most success-oriented, but he’s now basically at home helping out Ed. Though passive, he’s the central figure in the drama. How and why do the others try to shake him out of his passivity? Does anyone change him or is he a typical loser? If he’s ultimately insignificant, does that affect the whole family? Why or why not? Kate Alexander does a fine job directing a disappointing play by emphasizing its satiric parts, especially a sexist, racist parody of Oklahoma! that the men perform. She’s wisely enlisted Juliana Davis to choreograph movement, particularly the men’s mock-fights and feats of indoor athleticism. The director hasn’t been able, however, to make the Persons in Charge significant or even useful. (They could perhaps help move props for scene changes in some meaningful way.) Happily, costumes, lighting, and sound are just right. Whoever manages props deserves good mention for supplying all the food and drink as well as Christmas decorations. I couldn’t help thinking that this play could be a parallel companion piece to one satirizing a family of Single Pretty Women and their mother or even both parents. Of course, that might not be a popular draw in the current climate, although similar plays about SPW have been in the past.
