Reeling from the death of a loved one, a tough daughter must also grapple with her pill-popping shrew of a mother, who seems intent on destroying both herself and her family.
No, I’m not writing about the recently closed August: Osage County. Carole Gaunt’s new play, Dance of the Seven Headed Mouse, just bears an overwhelming resemblance to that instant classic. And she has done herself no favors by conjuring up comparisons to Tracy Letts’s sprawling American tragedy.
Instead of the Westons acting out the dark side of the American dream on the plains, we have the socialite Reeds on Fifth Avenue, falling apart after the death of their beloved daughter Molly. Mother Elly (Laura Bonarrigo) has found an escape with pills and white wine; father Kevin (Joseph Adams) is perpetually traveling for business; and surviving daughter Avril (Lauren Currie Lewis) has dropped out of her ritzy boarding school to pour Ipecac down Elly’s throat on a recurring basis. When Avril’s former roommate, Juliana (Molly Ephraim), comes for a weekend visit to convince Avril to return, the tensions in the Reeds’ home come to a head.
Unfortunately, director Christopher McElroen derails the proceedings with extended wordless sequences between scenes. As Bonarrigo staggers across the stage increasingly wasted, Maya Simkowitz, as a young Molly, stiffly dances with the herky-jerky motions of a dying wind-up toy. These silent scenes seem to last beyond all proportion to their necessity, and single-handedly grind the show to a halt, leaving the threadbare problems of the Reeds even more lackluster.
Lewis is appealingly forlorn as Avril, struggling both with her own pain and with her mother’s increasingly erratic behavior, all of which comes to a head when Juliana (Molly Ephraim) arrives for a weekend visit. Torn between her friend and her mother’s welfare, Avril is a teenager on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Graunt convincingly conveys Avril’s dilemma. But then she undermines her own script by writing an unconvincing showdown over Avril between the arrogant Elly and the teenaged Juliana, who somehow comes out of it with the upper hand.
Some of the play’s problems lie with Bonarrigo. Giving a mannered performance as the pill-popping, Chardonnay-swilling Elly, Bonarrigo is so affected that she seems more like a character out of Valley of the Dolls than a contemporary UES wife and mother. But then, Graunt’s hilariously imperious dialogue—“Whether I hold my head in the air or over a toilet bowl is my business”—begs for the kind of over-the-top delivery that made Valley of the Dolls a camp classic.
That’s the imbalance in Graunt’s play in a nutshell: She’s lavished so much attention on Elly, given her so many zingers, that everyone else recedes into the background. Graunt should have paid more attention to August: Osage County, because Dance of the Seven Headed Mouse could dearly use a second powerhouse role to balance Elly and her pills.
Through July 25. The Beckett Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-279-4200. $46.25.
No, I’m not writing about the recently closed August: Osage County. Carole Gaunt’s new play, Dance of the Seven Headed Mouse, just bears an overwhelming resemblance to that instant classic. And she has done herself no favors by conjuring up comparisons to Tracy Letts’s sprawling American tragedy.
Instead of the Westons acting out the dark side of the American dream on the plains, we have the socialite Reeds on Fifth Avenue, falling apart after the death of their beloved daughter Molly. Mother Elly (Laura Bonarrigo) has found an escape with pills and white wine; father Kevin (Joseph Adams) is perpetually traveling for business; and surviving daughter Avril (Lauren Currie Lewis) has dropped out of her ritzy boarding school to pour Ipecac down Elly’s throat on a recurring basis. When Avril’s former roommate, Juliana (Molly Ephraim), comes for a weekend visit to convince Avril to return, the tensions in the Reeds’ home come to a head.
Unfortunately, director Christopher McElroen derails the proceedings with extended wordless sequences between scenes. As Bonarrigo staggers across the stage increasingly wasted, Maya Simkowitz, as a young Molly, stiffly dances with the herky-jerky motions of a dying wind-up toy. These silent scenes seem to last beyond all proportion to their necessity, and single-handedly grind the show to a halt, leaving the threadbare problems of the Reeds even more lackluster.
Lewis is appealingly forlorn as Avril, struggling both with her own pain and with her mother’s increasingly erratic behavior, all of which comes to a head when Juliana (Molly Ephraim) arrives for a weekend visit. Torn between her friend and her mother’s welfare, Avril is a teenager on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Graunt convincingly conveys Avril’s dilemma. But then she undermines her own script by writing an unconvincing showdown over Avril between the arrogant Elly and the teenaged Juliana, who somehow comes out of it with the upper hand.
Some of the play’s problems lie with Bonarrigo. Giving a mannered performance as the pill-popping, Chardonnay-swilling Elly, Bonarrigo is so affected that she seems more like a character out of Valley of the Dolls than a contemporary UES wife and mother. But then, Graunt’s hilariously imperious dialogue—“Whether I hold my head in the air or over a toilet bowl is my business”—begs for the kind of over-the-top delivery that made Valley of the Dolls a camp classic.
That’s the imbalance in Graunt’s play in a nutshell: She’s lavished so much attention on Elly, given her so many zingers, that everyone else recedes into the background. Graunt should have paid more attention to August: Osage County, because Dance of the Seven Headed Mouse could dearly use a second powerhouse role to balance Elly and her pills.
Through July 25. The Beckett Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-279-4200. $46.25.
