It’s just as well Steve Tesich’s latest drama at Playwrights Horizons isn’t any good; if it were, it would probably put me in therapy for a decade. Arts & Leisure is an externalized, interior monologue for a theater critic.
Though constantly questioning the value of his profession, Alex Chaney is, at least, secure in it. His problem comes when he applies his critical acumen to situations in real life and learns that he stands, hollow, outside human relationships. That leaves those around him in a vacuum: his wife Lenore (Frances Conroy) sliding into a grand dame madness; his daughter (Elizabeth Marvel), a bundle of neurotic rage, releasing her hate through stand-up performance art. Their scene together is the play's best, she trying to shock him into caring, he hoping to convince her that outward signs of affection are an acceptable substitute for love.
Elizabeth Marvel’s performance here deserves comment, for she does something very difficult: she not only tears through the daughter’s on-the-sleeve pain but puts over her stand-up comedy monologue, as well. With her fright-wig hair and gangly limbs clothed in deliberately non-conformist colors, Marvel finds the hurt little girl in the deeply disturbed grown woman.
Thus does Arts & Leisure show the destructiveness of taking a laissez faire attitude toward life, but the play feels maddeningly artificial (the director is Joanne Akalaitis—surprise!), with scenes presented as if they were lifeless objects taking off the shelf for a dusting. Mary Diveny gets the worst of it; her live-in maid—who’s supposed to be a moral center for Alex that keeps him from getting too self-assured—is just a sourpuss, one who can think of no more damningly witty adjective for her boss than “motherfucker.”
Even this might fly if Harris Yulin helped get it off the ground. Yulin’s addresses, and even his arguments, are so low-key, we begin to wish for an Alex Chaney to shame him into giving some kind of performance.
