Comedy, as they say, is tragedy that happens to someone else. And the calamities that are happening just beyond an apartment in Inwood, N.Y., and all around the globe — the effects of climate change, economic distress, the rise of white supremacy militias, rioting and looting — are nothing if not calamitous. Yet in Last Night in Inwood, now receiving its world premiere at Florida Atlantic University Theatre Lab, playwright Alix Sobler (whose Glass Piano also appeared at the Lab two seasons ago) manages to mine this surfeit of tragic events for its comic potential.
The apartment belongs to Danny (Aubrey Elson), a big-hearted but somewhat bitter female social worker, who allows her one-bedroom flat to serve as a refuge for her relatives, who have been evacuated from their homes, and for some of her neighbors in her building. Sobler demonstrates a knack for crafting a diverse handful of characters of various political, social and generational stripes and soon has them squabbling with each other.
The first to arrive is Danny’s dad, Max (Avi Hoffman), against whom she continues to hold a grudge stemming from her feeling shut out as her mother was dying of cancer. Then there is Danny’s aging hippie aunt Sheila (Patti Gardner), Max’s sister-in-law, his political polar opposite. He is a right-wing conservative, confident that the government will soon have the crises under control. She is a knee-jerk liberal who frequently mentions her attendance at the Woodstock rock festival half a century earlier, and who feels certain that the government is the problem.
Filling out the cast — at least until Danny’s husband Cal (Jovon Jacobs) arrives from surveilling the situation on the streets — are two 20-something neighbors, Jazz (Lynette Adames) and Billy (Paolo Pineda). Their function in the play is chiefly to antagonize and argue with the older characters.
Thus assembled, the group launches into truth-telling and recriminations, getting on each other’s nerves while deciding their best course of action. Cal, who has seen the army rounding up local residents into detainment camps, thinks they should head to Canada. Danny feels certain they would never make it to the border, suggests instead hiding out in Inwood’s dense forest. And Max pushes for staying put and surrendering to the military when they arrive on Danny’s doorstep. Who you agree with will say as much about your own attitudes and values as it does about the arguments presented.
The stakes are high, the situation is dire, yet Sobler refuses to ignore the humor that bubbles to the surface when the heat is on these characters. Producing artistic director Matt Stabile is attuned to the comic side of Last Night in Inwood, while also keeping the play grounded in a reality of sorts.
Hoffman, best known for his one-man Too Jewish? trilogy, slips comfortably into the skin of Max, a Jewish businessman and widower, set in his MAGA ways, in opposition to everyone else in the apartment. Gardner is particularly amusing as Danny’s aunt, even if she does occasionally drift into caricature. Jacobs enters the play late, but is a strong presence as black male nurse Cal, who triggers Max’s reflex racial prejudice. And FAU MFA grad Elson is a standout as the play’s delicate balance, who tries to keep the peace but gets drawn into verbal skirmishes.
Scenic designer Michael McLain provides a detailed, believably lived-in unit apartment set, credibly but unobtrusively lighted by Eric Nelson. It would be nice to think that the concerns that trigger the panic in Last Night in Inwood are ephemeral matters that would give the play a limited shelf life. But alas, Sobler seems very keyed in to our zeitgeist of global woes that should keep this comic-drama current and in demand for a long time to come.
LAST NIGHT IN INWOOD, FAU Theatre Lab, Parliament Hall, 777 Glades Road, Florida Atlantic University campus, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Feb. 12. $35-$45. 561-297-6124.