Produced by the New Group at the Acorn Theater at Theatre Row
Written by Mike Leigh
Directed by Scott Elliott
In its first half, “Two Thousand Years” lays out an uber-typical British family of Jewish liberals in a hyper-realistic style. Before the house lights have even dimmed, the audience has been plunked down in a bourgeois world of comfy sofas and densely-packed bookcases. A series of oddly-shaped scenes follow, show the family sitting around on a Sunday afternoon discussing the latest op-ed about Israeli-Palestinian relations, and leaving the stage to continue their conversation about Bush and Blair in another room, and saying nothing much at all. To draw this deliberately generic family – mother, father, son, daughter, and curmudgeonly grandfather – Mike Leigh creates a relaxed, almost fugue state in the audience, which isn't the best state to put an audience in: it's awfully close to boredom.
Still, it's an elegent demonstration of portraiture. The family long ago substituted open-mindedness with smug complacency. So when their son surprises them by wearing a yamulka, you'd expect it to hit them like a Molotov cocktail. But again, Leigh’s sense of realism denies us the standard confrontation of ideas: although there's lots of yelling, none of these people can really articulate why they believe what they believe, because it's been so long since they thought about it. Initially at least, “Two Thousand Years” feels like an accumulation of anticlimaxes, or a precise set of observations about human behavior and social convention, but it doesn’t really feel like a drama.
At intermission, the audience can’t do much more than shrug and wonder where on earth the play is headed, and maybe repeat a few of the Yiddish words that the characters have thrown around, the only living remnants of their ancestors’ faith. The second act, however, is much more traditional, to the point of stiffness. It hinges on the return of a long-absent sister. This monster of ego wants to impress the family with her crass displays, and resents them for not treating her like a Prodigal Daughter. Instead, her displays of self-pity bind the family closer together. Kicking her out heals the rifts between them all – especially the son, who removes his yamulka, enjoys a civil conversation with Grandpa, and later plays a game of chess with Dad over Sunday tea.
Her arrival seems to send Leigh in an entirely new direction: the conversations about religion and the quiet, rabbit-y structure get jettisoned for the Big Scene that we’d stopped waiting for. But the larger problem is that, even though Cindy Katz plays her with gusto, the sister smacks not only of dramatic contrivance but of caricature. She’s shrill, she’s insulting, she self-dramatizes, and she swigs a drink from the liquor cabinet after everyone’s left the room.
Director Scott Elliot and his cast conjure Leigh’s cool, complex world with care—Richard Masur is particularly smart as the middle-aged father. And onetime film star Natasha Lyonne, making her theater debut, shows some potential (especially when teasing the yamulka-wearing brother) and hopefully will grow more confident with experience.
No, the script's the problem in the New Group's production. Leigh, having introduced his themes, never investigates them: the young man’s hunger for religion’s existential assertions, and his family’s distance from them, are only glanced upon. He misjudges the audience’s expectations, at first by deliberately confounding us, but then by clumsily giving us a pat sense of climax and closure. Good characters and fine directing don’t make up for that.
'Two Thousand Years' plays plays through March 8 at at Theatre Row's Acorn Theater (410 W. 42nd St. between Ninth and Tenth Aves.)
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