With a wild dive into one family’s love and marriage, Beth Wohl’s promising new play, Grand Horizons, makes its Broadway debut at Second Stage’s Helen Hayes Theater. An accomplished cast explores a family relationship with poignancy and stabs of sit-com humor, unearthing staleness and random impulsiveness, wacky consequences and endurance. The couple, Nancy, played decorously by Jane Alexander (The Great White Hope) and James Cromwell as cranky Bill (“Babe”), have been placidly wed for fifty years and recently moved to a senior community, Grand Horizons,” offering comforting sameness for their golden years. Scenic designer Clint Ramos designed a tidy suburban row-house with a hefty, well-used recliner and sofa from the old place along with framed photos and knick-knacks filling wall spaces.
For some, fifty years of marriage might call for celebration but in Nancy and Bill’s case, the years have offered more boredom than bliss. As they settle down at the kitchen table for another tedious dinner, Nancy breaks the silence with, “I think I would like a divorce.” Bill’s laconic reply. “All right.” Nancy looks up, momentarily stunned, but they then proceed go on with the steps of separation. Under the direction of Leigh Silverman, the couple seems to handle their breakup smoothly enough. When their two grown sons hear of it, however, they see the breakup as an inconvenience to be mended so they can get back to their own lives. An intervention between family members is planned to hash things out. In the process, the sons add more humor and pain than help. The sensible older son, a businessman named Ben (Ben McKenzie), is married and focused on his pregnant wife, Jess, and his upcoming commitments as a family provider. He says, “If you wanted to get divorced you should have done it after we went to college, like normal people." Jess (Ashley Park), a trained therapist, eagerly inserts her professional skills to get her in-laws to at least hold hands. Ben’s younger gay brother, Brian (Michael Urie), is hyperbolic and considers himself the family emotional caretaker. He is a dedicated high school theater teacher so sensitive that he cannot hurt the feelings of anyone auditioning for a part in his current school play, The Crucible. (The cast is now burgeoning at 200). While the interaction of parents and children is often hilarious, there is a diversity of both sadness and wackiness. Jane Alexander and James Cromwell never lapse far from the truth in their interpretations of parents who raised their family without sharing honesty and intimacy. Nancy and Bill’s marriage was formulaic and at some point, Nancy realized that she never lived a life of her own, dined alone in a restaurant, had her own bank account. This was not unusual with her generation. We have to wonder what provoked her sudden realization of discontent. The lack of intimacy, in fact, is the central problem of this dysfunctional family, until now. Nancy tells her older son that Bill is having a close relationship with a neighbor named Carla, horrifying Ben by adding that the two are sexting. Lopez played by Priscilla Lopez (A Chorus Line) is believable as the easy-going, brightly dressed Carla who contrasts perfectly from the crisp and dignified Nancy. Outspoken, she shares her fondness for her vibrator, “You just order them on the internet. Mine looks like an egg… It just tucks right in there.” Nancy does reveal that her real first love has continued secretly for many years. Brian, his emotions on the edge, veers toward a full-blown panic attack, covering his ears, eyes tearing up, trying not to picture his mother in an intimate sexual moment. (Such a private revelation by mother to son seems implausible). Despite segments that can benefit from editing and scaling down, playwright Beth Wohl, succeeds in exploring one’s personal identity within a family life as well as struggling through the differences between marriage and love.
