Love's Lingo Lost

OK, listen to this one: A linguist loses his wife because he can’t communicate with her. No, it’s not a throwaway 1960s comedy that turned into a smash hit back then because the drugs were better. That’s the actual plot of Julia Cho’s play [The Language Archive], being given a sumptuous new production Off-Broadway by Roundabout Theatre Company that can’t disguise how thin the show is.

Cho’s character and situations all feel like faded carbons of Sarah Ruhl, from the linguist’s wife warning him of her impending departure via notes hidden throughout the house to the hurried and flat wrap up at the show’s end. But Ruhl still manages to tug at your emotions, even as her shows feel less impressive. Cho’s play about love and language keeps us at a chilly distance.

Cho’s stock characters certainly don’t invite empathy: the linguist who can’t comprehend emotional responses; the love-struck assistant; the battling but ultimately adorable older couple. Everyone talks a lot about love (often in different languages), but there’s never been less of an emotional connection between characters and the audience.

The actors try like hell. Matt Letscher nails the emotionally dead George, getting in touch with his feelings too late for a happy ending with his wife, Mary (Heidi Schreck, who fares better with the more stylized second act). And Jayne Houdyshell and John Horton give everything they’ve got to Alta and Resten, who have been flown in to archive their almost dead language for George, but spend most of the play arguing in English over her cooking and his selfishness.

Then there’s Betty Gilpin, whose thin performance as George’s assistant Emma is the only one on stage that doesn’t offer glimmers of a deep inner life. She’s also one of those actors who resort to letting her hands slap against her legs to punctuate sentences, one of my particular pet peeves. Believe me, once you start noticing performers doing it, you’ll never be able to avoid seeing it again. She’s supposed to be an ingénue, but she comes across as forced bright cheer, like a cartoon character with pinwheels for eyes.

As these characters (most of whom are multi-lingual) fumble for the words to express their feelings, Cho raises interesting points about how we use language in our everyday life; one of the show’s few genuinely touching moments comes when George begs his wife to return to him, because they’re the only two people in the world who speak their shared language.

But Cho consistently chooses quirks over substance, all of which have been burnished into precociousness by director Mark Brokaw. A letter literally falls from the sky at an opportune moment; Emma begins to go blind from unrequited love for George; and the final scene finds all of the actors recapping the rest of the characters’ lives, a device more befitting a high school-set film than a play about the poetry and emotionalism of words. But one man’s poetry is another man’s doggerel.

[The Language Archive]

Through Dec. 19, Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 212-719-1300; $71–$81.