Joshua Harmon's Skintight is a mashup of quirky, bittersweet, sluggish, and hilarious, tangled in the Roundabout Theater Company's production at the Laura Pels Theater. Harmon, who recently wrote Admissions and Significant Other, presents a family with provocative characters looking for love but vexed with personal predicaments with beauty, loss, and loneliness. Audrey Hepburn once said, “The beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows!” but these are not comforting words for Jodi Isaac. Sharply portrayed by Idina Menzel, Jodi feels old. She is a recent mid-40's divorcée, depressed about her ex-husband's very young nubile fiancée. Yearning for comfort, she leaves Los Angeles for New York under the guise of surprising her Daddy on his 70th birthday and arrives at his chic, Lauren Helpern-designed minimalist home in New York's West Village. Raised to be self-absorbed, Jodi fully expects a loving welcome and has already invited her son, Benjamin, a 20-year gay student to join them upon his return from Hungary, where he is in a Queer Studies program. Alas, her aloof father, Elliot Isaac (Jack Wetherall) is hardly welcoming. A fashion designer, apparently patterned after Calvin Klein, Elliot no more anticipates his fading beauty and passing years than does his daughter. "I don't want to do anything for my birthday. I told you—I was explicitly... explicit." In addition, her arrival is threatening his own celebration plans with 20-year-old boyfriend, Trey (Will Brittain), a beautiful but dumb ex-porn actor from the Ozarks. Jodi meets him wearing a gold Rolex, and securely ensconced in Elliot's posh home. Jodi makes no secret of her disapproval and refuses to accept Trey as a member of the family, judging him a threatening interloper. Serving the family is Elliot's former boyfriend, Jeff, a slender, silent butler played by Stephen Carrasco. Cynthia Mace plays Orsolya, the work-weary Hungarian maid and both evidently observe everything. As Jeff later comments to Jodi, "Anything that's very beautiful only lasts a very short time." The temperature chills when Jodi's disheveled son, Benjamin arrives, played by Eli Gelb, sulky and cynical. He and Trey trade teasing sexual sparks that raise the eyebrows of both Jodi and Elliot, especially as Trey swans comfortably through the house in just a skimpy jockstrap. Like Gelb, Menzel has an astute flair for comedy and one might almost feel a tinge of compassion for her character, wrapped by Jess Goldstein in comfy sweater and worn jeans, if she weren't so caustic and egotistical. Tempers come to a boil just before the family dinner. Making an earnest if awkward toast, Trey reveals his love for Elliot. "I don't ever want to lose you, because, I just don't, and I want us to be together forever and everything, and so, what I want to say is, is I wanna know will you marry me?" Jodi is horrified. While director David Aukin keeps the humor high and Harmon's dialogue on target, the plot moves into a serious vein when Elliot and Jodi discuss Elliot and Trey's upcoming marriage. She tells him, "Listen, I say this with love, I do, but... You're old." She goes on to blame him for negating family responsibility for hunky hot sex. Elliot replies, "Hot is everything. Look around you. This house, this life, has been paid for by hot... Sex is life, it's life, and I want life. Because I love life. I love waking up next to him because it feels like life, and I love that." To Jodi, he is choosing Trey's love and beauty over her family love. With abundant laughs, the plot is sluggish, often hanging in mid-air, yet there is a wordless ending between the characters as they have family-like dinner that promises a possible resolution. But only possible, not probable.
