To see outstanding talents struggling with a flawed script, head up to Off-Tryon Theater in NoDa and you'll find a powerfully acted production of a dubious comedy, Wendy MacLeod's The House of Yes. Meghan Lowther stars as Jackie-O, prime nutball in a radically dysfunctional household. MacLeod's weird walpurgisnacht on the 25th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination is lashed by incest, infidelity and a hurricane. Glenn Griffin directs grimly, so the eccentrics onstage never strike us as witty or goofy. By evening's end, likability had gone with the electricity in the hurricane's wake.
Lowther has the measure of Jackie-O's predatory cattiness. Jimmy Chrismon has a plausible take on the hapless brother, the JFK of Jackie's sex fantasy, and Carolyn Dempsey offers glimmers of comedy in the protective matriarch's wickedness. But if your comfort zone only encompasses comedies where you can admire or identify with somebody onstage, welcome to the House of No.
