Few Stout Individuals, A

A good way to describe John Guare's newest play, A Few Stout Individuals, would be, well, stout. Literally busting at the seams with characters, historical events and information, this extravagant re-imagining of the process by which one Samuel Clemens (William Sadler) attempted to draft the memoirs of President Ulysses S. Grant (Donald Moffat) is overstuffed. But nobody can make that quite as endurable as Guare, as for every scene in the play feels trite or mundane, twice as many are healthy reminders of what an accomplished storyteller the man can be.

The play begins in 1885 in the ravaged mansion of the former president, once a glorious home to his large family, now the equivalent of a shack due to the family's woeful financial situation. Clemens has been called upon to finalize plans for the leader's memoirs, but Mr. Grant is battling a severe throat cancer that renders him almost useless. His wife (Polly Holliday) does most of his talking and treats him to his daily medicinal cocaine and painkillers. She also masks a deep regret for the loss of her title as a woman of privilege but maintains it when dealing with trusted servant Harrison (Charles Brown), a former military man under Grant's command. Their three children reconvene to oversee the events: the Prez's excitable, loyal son Fred (T.J. Kenneally), who appears to occasionally lift from Dad's stash of medication, daughter Nell (Amy Hohn), married to a Brit that she thinks is rich and vice versa, and despised son Buck (Mark Fish), who prevented his father's health from improving by a bad judgment call in the past.

The household is run by the greedy, shady Adam Badeau (Tom McGowan), who has ideas of his own for the memoirs, and Grant finds his home even more crowded when he is visited (in fantasy) by the Emperor and Empress of Japan (nicely played by James Yaegashi and Michi Barall) who act as his conscience, a remnant of the man's much-adored trip to Japan years back. Somehow, the play manages to also weave in a facial sculptor, a hair tonic salesman, and opera singer Adelina Patti (Cheryl Evans). I told you, there's a lot of stuff in this one.

Though it wouldn't seem that way, the relatively small Peter Norton Space at Signature Theater Company houses the play nicely. Expertly designed by Allen Moyer and costumed by Gabriel Berry, it has the details of a house run amok down pat. Everyone looks convincingly rumpled while trying to maintain composure and a sense of entitlement. Director Michael Greif seems to love chaos onstage, which might be why the brisker passages are more assured. However, the unevenness of the proceedings can wear the viewer down. At about two and a half hours, the tone changes so many times, we question how to relate to it all. It's far too broad to be completely dramatic, and too dense with factoids about its principles to be frivolous. The play is at its most successful when the two meet, and anything goes.

The cast really keeps everything aligned. Nobody in the show fails to make an impression -- not bad for an Off-Broadway production with 13 roles. Everyone is very good, but I had a particular fondness for Moffat's quiet dignity as Grant, Kenneally's hangdog likability as his favorite son, and Brown's imposing manservant, who holds a deep contempt for the man he works for. And Sadler, a terrific character actor, is tremendous as Clemens, giving him just the right balance of shyster bravado and dignified dutifulness (I can easily imagine him being a perfect Starbuck in The Rainmaker).

A Few Stout Individuals will not make you recall the fine author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation too often in its messy design, but it also doesn't let you forget him either. Untidy as it is, the play is all Guare, and that is pretty hard to argue with in any capacity.