Three sisters reuniting, an appealing beach house on Cape Cod, and the living is easy - or not. As Jess, the eldest sister says, “I’m not sure any of us Stockton girls can be truly happy.” And on we go from there.
Portrayed by Jennifer Mudge, Jess is most grounded sister, having always taken on the burden of nurturing her younger sisters after their celebrity father's messy death ten years earlier. Writer Mick Hunter was a womanizer who ignored his wife even as she was dying from cancer at age 40. Now Jess is also in treatment for cancer but is contained about her fears, keeping everyone, even her supportive husband, Fred (Kelly AuCoin), at a distance. On this weekend Jess turns 41 and will officially outlive her mother who died from the same illness. She and Fred, a food writer, are hosting a birthday get-together at the family vacation house.
The sisters all live in New York City but rarely see each other. The vacation house was left to Jess in their father's will. (Can you guess upcoming simmering problems about that?) “All I want is for everybody to play nice,” Jess says, and as she waits for her sisters and their plus-ones, the mood is busy, the beach house is inviting but the undercurrent of darkness in Of Good Stock is palpable.
Celia (Heather Lind), the youngest sibling arrives first, likeable, chatty, and unfocused. She just arrived from Missoula, Montana, the hometown of her new younger boyfriend, Hunter, who is expected sometime later. Hunter, played by oafish charm by Nate Miller, looks out of place with the upper-middle class Stocktons but is quite comfortable in his skin, although as the weekend unwinds, his long-term plans with Celia might not prove so appealing.
Once again playing the ditzy blonde, Alicia Silverstone as Amy, the self-centered middle child, shows up with her GQ casual fiancé, Josh (Greg Keller), all in a dither about her upcoming destination wedding in Tahiti. It doesn't take long for the life-long resentments to escalate and the liquor to pour. Celia teases, Amy screeches and runs off in tears, Jess placates. The sisters' grievances are predictable - the hackneyed squabbling over the house being left only to Jess, Amy's narcissistic wedding and then Celia's unexpected pregnancy and move to Missoula. Says Jess, "I'm trapped in a bad chick flick." The puzzled men do what they can, but one bails, leaving behind a melodramatically devastated "Bridezilla Barbie." You can't blame him.
Director Lynne Meadow's smooth pacing of humor and pathos gives Ross's overwritten play a modicum of gravitas. Mudge and AuCoin lead a convincing cast through a script veering toward clichés. There are breaks, now and then, for some sharp humor but the unending resentments simmer and boil over and eventually are resolved in an awkward girls only drunken venting. After everyone leaves, Jess is left with the lingering realization that she is alone facing her disease and its outcome.
To present this family dysfunction, Santo Loquasto designed an enviable setting highlighted by Peter Kaczorowski's lighting design. Costumes by Tom Broecker are Yankee perfect for the various characters and are standouts for the upwardly mobile Amy and Josh. Nevertheless, the Manhattan Theater Club's production Of Good Stock at City Center Stage I, succeeds only as a better-than-average Lifetime Movie.
