Review: Pictures from Home
What to Do When Nothing Develops
As soon as I see a narrator, I know we’re in trouble.
It’s not that plays can never support the device of narration, it’s just that a narrator wants to tell, and good plays tend to show.
It seemed important to share that opinion before letting you know that Pictures from Home, the new play premiering at Studio 54, is filled with narration. I guess that could be forgivable if it was at least telling us what the protagonist’s intentions are, but most of the play finds the characters (and the audience) meandering through the confusion of everyone involved.
That cloud of perplexion begins long before you enter the theater. In fact, it seems to have formed right at the inception of the play’s announcement.
How did a play with some of theater’s biggest names wind up being shoved in the middle of the theater season with little-to-no fanfare at a house usually reserved for Roundabout productions with a set that looks like what would happen if somebody tried to create a life-sized Boca Raton dollhouse? Everything about the show beyond its script seems to have come together through force (and probably some blank checks) rather than passion.
Whatever the play’s shortcomings are, it isn’t due to lack of inspiration. Set in the 1980’s, it follows Larry Sultan (Danny Burstein), a photographer who spent a decade photographing and documenting conversations and moments with his parents, Irving and Jean (Nathan Lane and Zoë Wanamaker) much to their indifference and occasional distress.
Sharr White, the playwright behind the brilliant internal thriller The Other Place and the clunky Chekhov homage The Snow Geese, says in his note to the audience--
“The play is my exploration of Larry’s exploration.”
You know what verb doesn’t thrill me when talking about what I’m seeing onstage?
Explore.
I’d like it if the director, the writer, and the actors all did the exploring so that they can then bring their findings back to me.
I have no doubt that White feels a connection to what he’s writing about, but he’s limited in what he can understand based on what Sultan left behind. All three of the people the characters are based on have since passed away, and what White feels comfortable imagining about them is not enough to build a play on. Even Sher, who normally can inject life into just about any story, seems unsure what to do with these three titans of theater as he moves them around the brightly-colored Florida hellscape designed by Michael Yeargan.
If this is what their home looked like, I thought, Why would anybody volunteer to spend a decade of their lives there?
It’s strange to write a review like this only to then tell you that you should go see the play anyway, but truthfully, there are moments of greatness created simply by putting three stars of such magnitude together. Wanamaker has not been on a New York stage in quite some time and Lane has proven that he could sell hot chocolate in July if he had to. Burstein does his best to anchor the piece in deep-seated emotion that does bring a tear to several eyes in the play’s closing moments, but any and all enjoyment is brought about by three magicians of the stage, not by what’s happening on the stage itself.
Lane, in particular, seems to be falling back on tried-and-true tactics for dealing with a lemon. Most of his dialogue is spent provoking Larry, yelling, and trying to get a laugh out of every line possible. Wanamaker is more grounded, but that leaves Jean feeling flat for most of the show right up until she demands a bit of attention. I would have loved to have heard more about her personal history, but the same way Irving and Larry dismiss her, the play seems to have no interest in her either until it’s too late.
Throughout the play, Sultan’s photographs are projected onto the back wall of the stage. They are everything you would imagine could inspire a play--They capture the mundane while infusing dynamic tension using nothing but angles and light, they seem invasive yet caring, and they give us an idea as to why the artist behind them felt so compelled to keep taking pictures of his subjects year after year.
In other words, as usual, the pictures are worth far more than the words.