Why is Frank Wood, not just a stalwart of New York theater but a Tony winner, lying on the floor and playing a dying dog? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I sat watching Toros, the new play that opened this week for a brief run through Aug. 13 in Second Stage’s uptown space at the McGinn/Cazale Theater.
And unlike the pooch in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia, Wood’s dog isn’t even the title character. That honor goes to a twentysomething named Alex who has returned to his native Madrid after a failing attempt to make it in New York. His friends—frenemies really—ironically call him Toro, Spanish for bull, because he’s so meek.
Toro’s supposed bestie is Juan, an obnoxious rich kid who works for his realtor father, lives with his parents and spends most of his time in their cluttered basement. drinking, getting high and putting together lame rap beats that he believes will make him a star d.j.
The two other regulars who hang out in the basement are Andrea, who went to high school with Alex and Juan and isn’t sure which of them she’s now drawn too; and Tica, Juan’s family dog who is on her last legs and dragging herself around the room whenever she can muster up the strength to move at all.
Playwright Danny Tejera clearly wants to say something about the ennui of millennials in his native Spain but he’s better at indicating the fecklessness of his characters (there are repeated episodes of Juan just standing around and bopping to his beats) than he is at digging into what’s caused their stagnation or explaining what brings about the eventual changes in their behavior.
But Tejera does have a flair for natural-sounding dialog, especially the put-downs, repeat phrases and awkward silences that can pass for conversation among people who spend too much time together.
He's also studied with Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and his play exhibits some of the mischievously surreal elements that mark their works. The prime example being Tica, who, at least in Wood’s totally committed performance, comes off as the show's most sympathetic character.
Director Gaye Taylor Upchurch seems on shakier ground. So some of what she and Tejera do together works (an imaginatively mimed sex scene) but some of it doesn’t (the reveal and laborious disassembly of the family car).
On the plus side, Abubakr Ali, Juan Castano and the actor who goes by the single lower-cased letter b are all convincing as Toros' anchorless trio. Their characters may remind some theatergoers of the similar threesome in Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth. Lonergan’s play may be better, but it doesn’t have Tica.
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