It’s not often I find myself wishing I hadn’t bought the good seats, but this isn’t a show you want to see from the second row… or with your mother.
While there are a bevy of other reasons to dislike this show, which I’ll get to momentarily, but two very graphic and drawn out simulated sex scenes was – pardon the pun – masturbatory on playwright Tracy Letts’ part.
Letts, most widely known for his play August: Osage County and it’s subsequent film adaptation starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, admittedly wrote Linda Vista with himself in mind. As much as I’m sure that he meant for this to be cathartic and or relatable, I can’t imagine a worse time for a play about a cantankerous, middle aged white man who’s divorced, broke and an absentee father to ask an audience to sympathize with him.
It was an amazingly tone deaf exploration of ego and fantasy. Wheeler, our male lead played by Ian Barford, is still navigating a two year long divorce when we see him moving into his new two bedroom apartment in the San Diego neighborhood of Linda Vista. There’s no explanation for his second bedroom. It’s mentioned throughout that he barely sees his son, so it feels more an act of laziness on Lett’s part for why he can offer the spare bedroom to his neighbor.
Wheeler’s neighbor, Minnie, is of course, the epitome of a manic pixie dream girl. They officially meet at a bar where she’s hoping to interview for the hostess job when she remembers she saw him at the apartment complex pool the day before. She’s bold and antagonistic, calling him out for trying to hit on her though she’s half his age. What then morphs into a roommate situation after her boyfriend hits her quickly devolves by the end of the play with a surprisingly odd and racist undertone.
Meanwhile, Wheeler is in what could pass as a fledgling pseudo adult relationship with another woman far outside his league, though closer to his own age. Jules, a life coach with a Masters degree in happiness, finds his bleak outlook on life to be charming after they’re set up by his old college friends. He eventually dumps her for the even younger Minnie (who’s pregnant with her exes baby) only to beg for Jules to come back when the pixie leaves – but not before he pledges to love Minnie’s unborn child like his own in an attempt to get her to stay.
Wheeler lays waste to all of his friendships and seems oblivious to the impact of both his words and actions. In his job as a camera repairman (which, again seems lazy on Letts’ part for giving him an “every man’s” job, but expect us to believe he can afford half of his bills let alone the supposed giant alimony and child support bills he refuses to pay) he has a boss who harassed the young female employee, Anita. In an odd attempt at redemption, Wheeler rips into his boss trying to defend the Anita, which only gets him fired. Anita’s follow up monologue on the realities of having to manage men like their boss felt forced and as if it were written by the kind of man who doesn’t so much understand sexism or want it to end, but rather wants to pass as someone who cares that it exists.
By the end of this three hour mid life crisis I was left with a lot of answers, such as why half the theater was empty, why were my tickets so cheap and why hadn’t I read any glowing reviews. The Mark Taper Forum is a beautiful theater with nary a bad seat in the house, but even the stage design left something to be desired. With a full size billboard dominating the upper half of the stage it did less to focus the eye on actors and more to again highlight the laziness theme.
For all the condescension dripping from the dialogue and time capsule jokes about Trump and liberals, I don’t see much hope for another Pulitzer or even cult fandom like Killer Joe enjoyed. Even Neil LaBute has had his self aggrandizing and shock moments, but this is the first time I left a theater thinking “was that intentionally bad?” Only with David Lynch’s Inland Empire have I ever left feeling like the creator was laughing at the audience for trying to find any deeper meaning in his work…
