What a difference a director can make. The first time I saw
the dark comedy Straight White Men, it was directed by its playwright Young
Jean Lee for a 2014 workshop production at the Public Theater and although
Lee is a longtime downtown darling revered for her audaciousness, the result was
dour and off-putting. But the new Second Stage production that opened this week
at the company's Helen Hayes Theater under the vibrant direction of Anna D.
Shapiro gave me an evening in the theater that was both thought-provoking and entertaining.
Lee, who with this production becomes the first
Asian-American woman to have a play open on Broadway, is known for her deep
dives into questions of race and gender (click here to read a great profile of her). She usually comes at these issues from the perspective of the oppressed. Her
breakout piece The Shipment took on contemporary stereotypes about black people. Another one Untitled
Feminist Show upended the ways in which women's bodies are stigmatized by featuring six nude performers
ranging in size from petite to obese.
So it's clear that Lee is making a provocative statement
just by turning her gaze on the hetero cis-gendered white guys who give her
play its title. The four in Straight White Men are Ed, a widowed father in his
70s, and his three grown sons Matt, Jake and Drew who have gathered to
celebrate Christmas.
The baby of the family Drew is a tenured professor and an
award-winning novelist who flits from woman to woman. Middle brother Jake is a high-powered banker and recently divorced. But the eldest Matt has moved back in with their dad, works at a temp job, hasn’t dated in years and, despite his protestations that all is well, breaks
into tears as they eat a Christmas Eve dinner of Chinese takeout.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around Matt's siblings’ bungling
attempts to understand and cure his sadness. Lee has added a framing device and
two new characters for this Broadway production. They are called the Persons in
Charge and are played by the gender fluid performers Kate Bornstein and Ty
Defoe who roam the audience before the show starts, introduce it with some TED
Talk-style patter and then literally position the actors in place before each
scene begins.
I think these gender-defying masters of ceremonies are supposed
to symbolize the fact that our concept of masculinity is in flux but they seem
redundant because when done right, as it's done here, Straight White Men makes
that point on its own.
The play goes out of its way to establish that these guys
are aware of the privilege that their race and gender give them. Drew solicitously suggests that Matt might be struggling with coming out. Jake's
ex-wife is a black woman and his kids are mixed-race. In the first scene the two of them play a modified version of the board game Monopoly called Privilege in which the
player who draws a white card has to pay a $200 penalty and go to jail.
And yet, in ways large (Jake mentors only whites at his
bank) and small (the brothers communicate best when they manhandle one another)
Straight White Men makes it clear that these men find it hard to break out of
the roles that society has set for them. Which is why they're so
horrified by Matt's feminine behavior: taking care of their dad, working a
low-paying job, crying.
In short, it's a hard-eyed look at how men oppress
themselves. But Shapiro keeps the play from being tendentious or tedious by
emphasizing the genuine affection these men feel for one another and their
earnest desire to be better than they are. This choice not to portray them as villains is an audacious act of compassion for liberal theatermakers to make in the current political climate.
Shapiro also doesn't shy away from using the innate charms of
her actors. Lots of people are turning out to see the show because Drew is played by the movie
star and avatar for today's straight white man Armie Hammer (click here for a very long profile about him) or because they liked the actors playing his
siblings, Josh Charles and Paul Schneider, in their roles on the TV shows
"The Good Wife" and "Parks and Recreation."
Under Shapiro's steady hand, all three actors appear totally
comfortable onstage and deliver performances that go far beyond cameo status. But
the biggest test to her mettle may have been the cast changes that occurred over
the past few weeks when Tom Skerritt bowed out of playing Ed during rehearsals and was replaced
by Denis Arndt, who bowed out during previews (click here to read about all of that).
Shapiro finally tapped the show's understudy Stephen Payne
to play Ed. Payne isn't a name like his co-stars but he is additional proof that this director really knows what her play needs.