During my first theater job in New York, I was asked to go to a reading of a play called The Mistakes Madeleine Made, by Elizabeth Meriwether. The play – about a young woman facing family tragedy and a fear of cleanliness -- ended up being produced by Naked Angels, and I’ve remembered it fondly for years because I enjoyed it so much. It was dark, but funny; deeply disturbed ideas somehow created infectious laughter, and it didn’t feel gimmicky for a second. There was something paradoxical about how grounded Meriwether’s writing made the zany premise of the story feel – and it worked. I looked forward to seeing her future endeavors.
So imagine my surprise when visiting her latest play, Oliver Parker! (currently being produced by stageFARM at the Cherry Lane), having told my accompanying friend that Meriwether was one of my favorite up-and-coming writers, I found it, above all, tedious and adrift.
The play’s central relationship focuses on Oliver, 17 (Michael Zegen), and his best friend Jasper (John Larroquette), who is intent on drinking himself to death at the ripe age of 60. Actually, Jasper is also Oliver’s (very wealthy) family’s former driver. So they have a long history. Their co-dependency is sort of strange, hinging on a mutual desire to “save” each other; Oliver is in control, as he has his parents’ money, and yet Jasper holds something over him, too, something far less tangible. I hesitate to call it wisdom, in his case, but a certain power of age and experience hangs over Jasper.
Oliver’s biggest mission is to get laid. He’ll try anything, with anyone, even attempting to seduce a respected Senator (JohAnna Day, who is always a gift) while wearing a skeleton costume (no, seriously). And Jasper is willing to lend him his apartment (which Oliver’s family pays for anyway). Oliver’s overwhelming desire to have sex, or, more accurately, the ways in which he expresses it, are, well, juvenile. But a closer look shows that it’s really a desire to grasp at adulthood, and further, to regain agency where it had been lost years before.
Oliver was sexually abused as a child, a fact that, though only mentioned in passing at first, in a sort of spasmodic way, holds the play together. Oliver possesses a manipulative innocence, but is also quite deeply damaged, and for it, troubled. Underneath the somewhat farcical tone with which the play begins is a difficult story of very complicated psychological questions. Why would a young man choose to spend time with his former abuser? Why would he outwardly choose to be close to this person, all in the midst of attempting to finally overcome what had happened? I can’t presume to understand what goes on in that psyche, but the questions are abundant.
It’s ambitious, I’ll give it that. But it seems like Meriwether can neither give it the balance for which I fell in love with her writing, nor push it far enough to be taken completely seriously. Instead, the two sides of the play feel in friction with one another. It doesn’t feel as naturally like a dark comedy as I had hoped it would, and the laughs are in shorter supply than I had expected. But because she’s still attempted to inject it with wry and clever humor, it seems to separate. The performances and the direction are all-around fine, and yet don’t do enough to give it cohesion. I’ll hope for better luck next time.
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Scheduled through June 6, OLIVER PARKER! will play the following schedule: Tuesday-Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 5 pm. Tickets are $37.50 and are available by visiting telecharge at 212 239-6200 or www.telecharge.com or www.thestagefarm.org.
