Paul Dano and Peter Dinklage in 'Things We Want'
Produced by the New Group
Acorn Theatre, Theatre Row
Written by Jonathan Marc Sherman
Directed by Ethan Hawke
Poor Zoe Kazan. This fearless young actress has proven that she can electrify an audience when everything else onstage is deadly dull. In “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” Kazan’s schoolgirl idolization of Cynthia Nixon provided the production with the magnetism that Nixon herself lacked. In this fall’s “100 Saints You Should Know,” she provided the numbing play with an emotional crescendo, and improved her fellow actors’ performances simply by giving them someone to react to. Now, she’s adding a dose of reality to the otherwise phony “Things We Want.”
Jonathan Marc Sherman’s play covers two nights, one year apart. In the first act, Charles (Paul Dano) has suffered a breakdown from heartbreak. His older brothers, uptight Teddy (Josh Hamilton) and wash-up Sty (Peter Dinklage) suggest their own paths to recovery—a self-help guru and the bottle—in egregiously artificial dialogue. The actors may relish such lines as “I’ll get you for that, trust you me. Payback will be swift and taste like salmon.” But parse them out and you’ll find that (a) nobody speaks like that (“trust you me”), and (b) what sounds cool is actually meaningless (“Payback will … taste like salmon”) (?!).
Sty invites a cute neighbor over to help Charles forget about his mangled heart. Enter Stella (Kazan), in a schoolgirl uniform. This costume signals the play’s shift from mere Mamet imitation to just plain juvenile. The sheer laziness with which Sherman justifies Stella’s peek-a-boo outfit (something about wearing it every year on her birthday) emphasizes obvious sexism. The plot dictates that she fall for Charles. Happily, this scene is the evening’s most convincing and emotionally honest.
However.
One year later, the two older brothers have reversed roles: Sty has sobered up while Teddy has fallen apart after his guru fled the country with his savings. Charles plans to cook Stella dinner to celebrate their anniversary and her birthday. While he and Sty run to the supermarket, Teddy seduces Stella and runs off with her. The play’s shallow cynicism makes this turn predictable, and undercuts Charles’ devastation. Ironically, the play celebrates bad behavior as “masculine” though its final moments of camaraderie are almost Victorian in their sentimentality.
The men, for the most part, are as lazy as the script. Hamilton pulls out the same peacock ticks that he used a few seasons back in “Hurlyburly,” a three-hour testosterone-fest that co-starred hipster artiste Ethan Hawke. Hawke—close pals with Sherman, Hamilton and Dinklage — is directing this time; maybe that’s why the show feels cliquish and self-indulgent. By the time Kazan’s stripped to her underwear, the play’s gone beyond a guilty pleasure. Though she does anchor her role in some emotional reality, she can’t navigate a character that’s fundamentally different from act to act and is nothing more than a prize in fraternal games. If she didn’t approach her role with such conviction, the play would seem downright exploitative.
You’ll remember Dano as the Nietzsche-reading teen in the indie sleeper “Little Miss Sunshine” last year, where he had the most human, knotted performance of the film. Here he gives his role a soul that’s not in the dialogue, partly by pacing his words slightly slower, as if he’s actually thinking. And he and Kazan have chemistry. They’re great to watch, at one moment teasing each other with playful cruelty, at another disclosing secrets with sentimental candor. If the rest of “Things We Want” weren’t so bogus, this one scene might’ve redeemed it.
'Things We Want' runs until December 30 at the Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd St. between Ninth and Tenth Aves.) Tickets $56
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