What could be more human than a family gathering at Thanksgiving, sharing a meal together, giving thanks, expressing hopes and the inevitable disappointments.
So it goes at Palm Beach Dramaworks in Stephen Karam’s Tony Award-winning comic drama, The Humans, a jaundice-eyed look at the Irish-Catholic Blakes, Erik and Deirdre (Andy Prosky and Anne-Marie Cusson), of Scranton, Pennsylvania. They have driven into New York City to break bread, and perhaps shatter some illusions, at the newly rented, spacious yet shabby Chinatown duplex apartment of daughter Brigid (Casey Sacco) and her live-in boyfriend, Richard (Daniel Kublick).
Filling out the holiday card table roster — most of the couple’s furniture is still undelivered due to a holiday logjam — are Erik’s dementia-addled, wheelchair-bound mother, known as Momo (Laurie Tanner), and Brigid’s lesbian sister Aimee (Lindsey Corey), who suffers from both ulcerative colitis and the heartache of a recent breakup with her longtime lover.
On the surface, you may have little in common with the Blakes, but such is Karam’s insightful writing that you will gradually identify with them and their collective plights.
As the play’s rather generic-sounding title suggests, The Humans consists largely of character studies, with little actual incidents other than interpersonal squabbling and the bearing of secrets. Beyond the six humans, though, there is a seventh character — Brigid and Richard’s apartment — with its unreliable electric wiring and frequent otherworldly thumps wafting through the paper-thin walls. Credit resident scenic designer Anne Mundell and sound designer Roger Arnold with creating a off-kilter urban space as unnerving as Karam envisioned.
Although not as cerebral as many of Dramaworks’ usual selections, The Humans is undeniably involving theater as we eavesdrop on the Blakes. One by one, we hear their complaints as well as their reasons to be thankful. Yes, they can get on each other’s nerves, but this is not the usual dysfunctional family play.
Still, Aimee has lost her job at a Manhattan law firm because of her medical condition. Her devoutly religious mother has long been a loyal office assistant, making a fraction of what her less hard-working male bosses earn. Brigid considers herself a composer, but is forced to take jobs as a barista to pay the bills. Her boyfriend Richard is steeped in his studies for a degree in social work, biding his time until he turns 40 and gains access to a lucrative trust fund. And patriarch Erik is harboring a secret about his long-held support job at a private school, a secret he is waiting for the right time to tell his daughters, and us.
These woes could have easily drifted into caricature, but Dramaworks’ reliable resident director J. Barry Lewis steers the production with an assured, yet invisible hand that keeps us enthralled throughout the production’s intermissionless hour and three-quarters. Ensemble is a difficult quality to define, but if you looked it up in a dictionary, you just might find a picture of this cast. While there is no star performance, each company member gets moments to stand out memorably.
Although there is a timeless quality to the Blakes’ holiday reunion, playwright Karam pinpoints the action to 12 years after 9/11. That fateful day does not really figure into The Humans, for these characters have their own personal crises to worry about. And worry they do, yet something keeps them soldiering on, that most human of traits.
THE HUMANS, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis Street, West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, March 2. $92. Call 561-514-4042 or visit www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.