City Theatre’s latest production begins with the flushing of a “Pittsburgh toilet.” This inside joke puts us in an unfinished basement to find a disheveled bare-chested Martin Giles stumbling barefoot into another day.
He’s Teddy, the down-and-out and probably crazy brother of Helena Ruoti’s Irene and living in her cellar. John Shepard plays Gerry, her husband, who doesn’t want Teddy around. With these stage veterans directed by Marc Masterson in a set designed by Tony Ferrieri, Downstairs is a cozy reunion that can make regular theater-goers relax in their seats. There’ll be no surprises.
Artistic director Masterson has come home again to the theater company he founded 45 seasons ago after a distinguished career in Louisville, Ky., and Orange County, Calif. Downstairs is his first production as director since he returned. He’s lost none of his skills.
The timing is precise, the actors are given plenty of “business” to play with and the suspense grows imperceptively to the climax.
What’s missing is a play that transcends that messy basement to connect its audience to a world outside the troubled characters. In their wild, funny and overwrought speeches, the characters seem ready to find insight or revelation, but they never quite make it.
But, that’s Teresa Rebeck, the Danielle Steel of the American theater whose prolific output gives actors lots of scenery to chew on, but little to ponder or question. Her Mauritus used the plot of Arthur Miller’s The Prize, but without the characters’ understanding. Seminar, even with the late Alan Rickman in the Broadway production, revealed nothing about the struggles of writers.
With Downstairs, she creates a domestic horror story told by one-dimensional characters. Teddy is paranoia, Irene is denial and Gerry is violence. The actors are good at playing these cardboard people. Giles rambles on and on about being poisoned and having a get-rich scheme while Ruoti smiles nervously and windmills her hands to ward off the truth. Shepard is menacing and cruel.
Whirling ominously away in their basement world is an old desktop computer that Teddy pounds into working order. It’s the fourth character in Downstairs that might have something to say, but we’re never sure what it is.
What Downstairs is, though, is entertainment. It sparkles with weird humor (who ever thought packing material was threatening?) and layers bits of information about Irene and Teddy to drop hints about their past. Still, it’s the usual stuff – absent father, abusive mother, etc.
We learn nothing about Gerry’s background, though, only that he hates everybody. People are only “noise.” Why does he feel this way?
Suddenly, Downstairs seems to end, but Rebeck tacks on an epilogue of sorts to gather up loose ends. The play runs nearly two hours without intermission but it could be trimmed to focus on the growing threat that Gerry symbolizes.
What is Downstairs about? Domestic abuse? The “unhappy family” of Tolstoy in contemporary America? The effect of radon on basement life? I’m not sure.
Downstairs runs through Feb. 2. Tuesday-Wednesday, 7 p.m.; Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; Jan. 22 and Jan. 29, 1 p.m. Call 412-431-2489 or City’s ticket page.
Bob Hoover retired from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as its full-time book editor and drama editor in 2011 after 28 years with the newspaper. He continued to write part-time for the PG reviewing books, theater, and articles on literary, historical and local topics until 2014. Hoover has reviewed myriad entertainment productions from the circus to children’s theater in Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Canada. As a book editor, he reviewed an average of 50 books a year, wrote regular columns on the local and national literary scene and organized and edited the newspaper’s weekly book section. He provided extensive coverage of Pittsburgh’s literary community as well as reporting on events, readings, and festivals around the country. Hoover was a theater journalism fellow at the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California and the winner of state and local writing awards.
Categories: Archived Reviews