The unhappy characters in Jeff Augustin’s The New Englanders, from Manhattan Theater Club at City Center Stage II, whine about their comfortable misery. Interracial gay couple Aaron (dignified but yearning Teagle F. Bougere) and Samuel (tender Patrick Breen) have lost the zip in their marriage, while their teenage daughter Eisa (fiery Kara Young) aspires to be the next Lauryn Hill and obsessively fears being ordinary. This leads her into a battle of wills while her equally neurotic English teacher Laura (brittle, sarcastic Crystal Finn) who still hasn’t gotten over losing big time on “Jeopardy.”
Meanwhile, Aaron is hooking up with old flame Raul (sweet Javier Munoz), a drifter with the case of the glooms and his own daughter issues, and Samuel finds a friend in Atlas (sharp Adam Langdon), Eisa’s classmate and drug dealer. Like Chekhov’s three sisters, all six bemoan their unhappy lot at being trapped in a nowhere town.
There are moments of wit and connection despite the over-reliance on coincidence as the characters meet and regroup in hardly believable pairings (Atlas and Samuel, Raul and Laura). Musings on race and gay-straight relations are often pointed, but these characters come across as overwhelmingly self-pitying. Fortunately, the professional cast endows this dreary un-self-aware sextette with vitality and spark, and Saheem Ali directs with pace and punch.
