Take Joy, for instance, the enigmatic woman at the center of “Parlour Song.” Joy's a dramatic cousin to the female lead of “The Homecoming,” the Pinter masterpiece running on Broadway: both are enigmas of sexual potency and hunger. But what Pinter suggests by moving a leg, Butterworth spells out with a long speech about preparing and drinking gallon after gallon of lemonade.
Playing Joy is Emily Mortimer, a London film actress recently transplanted to gotham and the stage. Mortimer makes a solid debut, investing the role with depth that the script lacks. She and her stage partners work hard to make “Parlour Song” sing, but their moments of success are rare. The script is only part of the problem, though: Neil Pepe's slovenly staging matches Butterworth's assertive symbolism.
It hasn't rained in the play's unnamed English suburb for over two months, a weather pattern that echoes the estrangement between Ned (Chris Bauer), an explosives expert, and Joy (guess what she represents?). His only joy—sorry, his only pleasure— is watching videos of his previous commissions. Duly, Butterworth and Pepe screen a montage of collapsing buildings, malls, and bridges.
Obviously, something's missing from Ned's life, a turn-of-phrase that Butterworth makes literal. As Ned explains to his neighbor Dale (Jonathan Cake, who's so rugged and handsome that his own name comes laden with symbolism), items from cufflinks to birdbaths keep disappearing from his home. As Ned reveals this mystery to Dale, his voice quakes with puzzlement and despair. He intuits that Joy has taken them, but he can't admit this outright either to himself or to his friend.
Instead, he begins a workout regime and listens to sex advice on tape. Butterworth and Pepe focus much stage time on this turn of events. It's entertaining when played for laughs—balding, roly-poly Bauer's cunnilingus exercises inspire one of the evening's few bursts of laughter—but two minutes of this chubby guy jogging around onstage moves past dull to abysmally boring.
Dale and Joy, meanwhile, begin an affair. Dale, written as a generic suburban prick, is given texture by Cake's glib delivery, and it's easy to see why Joy would take up with him. It's harder to understand why she'd invite this dolt to run away with her. Mortimer bases her characterization on Joy's mystery, which is so potent that Joy's invitation feels like a diminishment. After a vivid vision of Joy waiting under a streetlamp, Dale chooses to remain in suburbia. Without him, so does Joy. And despite all the symbolism and the convincing performances, it doesn't add up to anything profound.
But it does supply a beautiful stage picture, courtesy of Robert Brill's set, Kenneth Psner's lights, and Dustin O'Neill's projections. Together, they draw a domestic setting with Zen-like economy. Three items of furniture hang in a space that's as dark and quiet as suburbia at night: a comfy bed on a left, a comfy couch on the right, and a coldly formal dining table in the middle. The silhouettes of two empty windows glow in the black air under the white angle of a rooftop. It's a set for the play that “Parlour Song” wants to be but isn't: simple, ephemeral and suggestive.
'Parlour Song' plays through March 29 at Atlantic Theater Company (336 W. 20th St.). Tickets $55
Photo: Chris Bauer and Emily Mortimer in Atlantic Theater Company's production of "Parlour Song." Credit: Doug Hamilton
