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Dimly Perceived Threats to the System

by Jon Klein
review by Karen McKevitt in SF Weekly (May 9, 2001)
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A subversive look at the all-American family

Despite the right wing's renewed
push for "family values," the perfect
American family -- with happily
married Mom and Dad and
well-behaved little Dick and Jane --
never actually existed. If this is news
to you (or if your mom really was
June Cleaver), then Jon Klein's
1995 play, presented by Ambit
Theater Company, will be a real
eye-opener. Structured like a sitcom with short scenes, the work
focuses on a decidedly typical white family with predictable
problems: Daughter Christine (Riki Lindhome) acts out in school,
Dad (Bob Lieberman) is having an affair, and Mom (Sondra
Putnam) feels everything's her fault. For a piece that proposes to
debunk the sitcom myth, the characters are frustratingly
stereotypical. Dad's about as effective as Homer Simpson; his
mistress and work partner Megan Lones (Angela Anderson) is
portrayed as the trite single (and bisexual) female with a cat; and
Mom is a neurotic mess who flirts with the school therapist
(played the night I attended by the funny and subtle understudy
Tom Juarez). What saves the play from banality are layers of
unreality, as when Mom walks in on her husband and Megan just
as Megan says, "Don't think about your wife." Or when Dr. Grey
(Carol Flanagan), the physician for the family's hospitalized
grandmother (whose "system is being threatened"), transforms
into the grandmother to comfort Christine. Or when it appears the
therapist is trying to give Christine a lobotomy with a power drill
when he's really just sharpening a pencil. These ludicrous scenes
make us question what is really happening onstage and work as
"anti-sitcom" fodder, heightening those shows' ridiculous plot
structure. Director Debbie Lynn Carriger made a smart choice in
not changing the lighting for these scenes, which might have been
heavy-handed. But these subversions become muddied by the
sitcom ending, as we learn that Dad really does want the perfect
family, and Mom decides not to blame herself anymore.

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