Hell hath no fury like a well-intentioned self-appointed watchdog challenged, as David Lindsay-Abaire’s new ensemble comedy The Balusters reminds us. We’ve seen this group dynamic before – in real life possibly, but on stage definitely, most recently in the brilliant Eureka Day and surreal The Minutes – and if the excellently cast play opening tonight on Broadway in a Manhattan Theatre Club production doesn’t add significantly to the committee-implosion genre it certainly has its fun along the way to its comeuppances.
Gathering in a deliciously appointed large urban-ish home in a landmarked, gentrifying and diversifying neighborhood named Vernon Point (it’s fictional but every town has one – I’m imagining Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, but choose your own). The Neighborhood Association is meeting this week in the gorgeous, newly renovated home of neighborhood newcomer Kyra (Anika Noni Rose), a Black doctor (race is not mentioned here casually; stay tuned), who is eager to get involved in her new surroundings and just as eager to forget what happened at her old surroundings. It seems she’s not always exactly a team player.
Kyra’s handsome living room – an impeccible design by Derek McLane which, when Allen Lee Hughes’ day-glo lighting design flashes during black-out breaks, takes on an entirely different personality as surely must the over-polite guests behind closed doors – is soon bursting with the very opinionated nine committee members dedicated to the neighborhood’s preservation and functionality, even when those two things don’t always mesh. (Also in the mix is Kyra’s maid Luz (Maria-Christina Oliveras) who, we suspect, has some dirt on at least some of those she serves.
Richard Thomas and Anika Noni Rose
Jeremy Daniel
Led by the punctilious Eliot (Richard Thomas), whose decades-long residence in the neighborhood and his steamrolling-with-a-smile approach to such grave matters as the just-so balusters his neighbors should erect to support outdoor stairs and rails – and god forbid anyone chooses something from Home Depot – the committee addresses any number of mountain-seeming molehills. Who, some want to know, is routinely disposing dog feces in a neighbor’s trash can? And who is swiping Fed Ex packages from all those lovely porches and patios?
Of course, naming culprits often says more about the namer than the named. Point to the non-local teens hanging about on the public green and hints of racism are sure to surface. Same goes for accusing the immigrant construction workers. And why is the Muslim owner of the local hardware store so rude to the openly gay committee member Brooks (Carl Clemons-Hopkins)? Answer too quickly and risk revealing biases best left unsaid, these neighborhood guardians are perhaps too slow to learn.
Kayli Carter, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Anika Noni Rose and Jeena Yi
Jeremy Daniel
But the big conflict lands when newcomer Kyra proposes the installation of a street light or a stop sign or maybe just a speed bump in front of her house to end the weekly car crashes that threaten the safety of drivers and neighborhood kids. Eliot opposes, perhaps not least because he’s unused to being upstaged, especially by a newcomer, but also because, as he insists, even a stop sign would damage the aesthetic appeal of the postcard-perfect boulevard. The street, he notes, has never had a stop sign, so why stir up trouble?
There’s more to Eliot’s opposition, of course, which his fellow committee members (and the audience) will learn in due time, just as we’ll discover the reason for maid Luz’s barely disguised animosity toward Eliot, who happens to be her former boss.
Regardless of their points of contention – sometimes a baluster is more than just a baluster – playwright Lindsay-Abaire (Kimberly Akimbo, Rabbit Hole) and director Leon are more interested in the stark contrasts between our public-facing personas and the ulterior motives and fears that energize our private selves. Hypocrisy, not rail spindles or dog poop, is top of the play’s agenda, and to poke around that subject the playwright has peopled his work with a collection of character types. In addition to those already mentioned, there’s Penny (Marylouise Burke), elderly and sometimes befuddled but clear-eyed when it counts; Willow (Kayli Carter), the youngest whose family-derived privilege doesn’t stop her from lecturing everyone on their cultural shortcomings; Isaac (Ricardo Chavira), the blue-collar Latino construction owner who rarely mentions his physician wife lest it interfere with his working class hero image; Ruth Ackerman (Margaret Colin), an OG committee member who believes her Jewishness and family Holocaust history gives her carte blanche to take (and state) any number of offensive positions; Alan (Michael Esper), the committee’s straight white guy whose habit of saying the wrong thing is matched only by his self-pity when called out; and Melissa Han (Jeena Yi), a lesbian who resents the elderly Penny’s confusions but condescends to her nonetheless.
As alliances shift, the narrative twists (at least one big surprise isn’t really so surprising) and some secrets are revealed, The Balusters has things to get off its chest about preservation – what’s worth holding onto, what’s not, and what are the hidden motives for doing either – as well as who should get to make those decisions. No one, it seems here, is blameless.
While The Balusters is never less than entertaining, the play suffers in comparison to similar recent Broadway works, notably The Minutes and, especially, Eureka Day, both of which had sharper laughs and singular executions. Eureka Day, in particular, found its universality in the specificity of its liberal, well-to-do day-school officials and the panic that the hot topic of vaccines unleashed. The characters in The Balusters, despite an unassailable cast led by Richard Thomas, Anika Noni Rose, Margaret Colin and the delightful Marylouise Burke, never reach that level of pinpoint precision, its characters as often as not seeming little more than voices for their demographics, as uni-dimensional as the poster board demonstrating exactly where that stop sign should go regardless of which hypocrite stands to benefit.
Title: The Balusters
Venue: Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Written By: David Lindsay-Abaire
Directed By: Kenny Leon
Cast: Marylouise Burke, Kayli Carter, Ricardo Chavira, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Margaret Colin, Michael Esper, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Anika Noni Rose, Richard Thomas, Jeena Yi
Running Time: 1 hr 40 min (no intermission)