Starring: Rene Auberjonois, Katherine Helmond, MacKenzie Phillips, Bonnie Franklin, K Callan, Bruce French

In a relationship, someone always loves more, gives more. This adage is well proven in this play which illustrates a dysfunctional family pushed to the breaking point.

Katherine Helmond plays Agnes the matriarch. She delivers her verbiose lines with a fussy, brittle quality that fits her character, a woman of "breeding", well-educated and genteel, who uses her erudite speech as both shield and weapon.

René Auberjonois plays her husband, Tobias or Toby depending on who is addressing him, the loving father. René falls perfectly into character as the mild and well mannered Tobias, a man who was successful in business, but who feels like a failure as a father, ineffectual as a husband, and is tortured by temptation in the form of a fun-loving and far too understanding sister-in-law. Tobias is paying for his guilt over past indiscretions by allowing his friends and family to impose on him, and keeping a separate bedroom from his wife.

MacKenzie Phillips, as their world-weary daughter, Julia, who expects to be taken in and taken care of by Mummy and Daddy after each failed marriage, was fabulous. Ms. Phillips possessed a razor-sharp sense of comic timing, and provided a touchstone for the audience, reacting as many would, with incredulity at the bizarre situation in which she finds her family. Her beloved father finds himself caught between duty and family when she demands he make this impossible-for-him choice, and deftly conveys her sense of disbelieving hysteria without becoming overly dramatic in a scene that leads to the real emotional climax of this play.

Bonnie Franklin, the fun-loving and admittedly drunken Claire (not alcoholic, because as she points out, the alcoholics *want* to change, want to stop drinking and she doesn't), is delightfully acerbic and boozily wise as she uses her drunkenness to cut to the chase. As the rest of her, in turns, scandalized, shocked or disgusted family hides behind erudition (Agnes), hides behind hystrionics (Julia) or hides behind a mild-mannered facade (René), Claire does not hide, although she utilizes a great deal of Dutch courage to face her wacky, seemingly disintegrating family. Her speech is the only thing that is, at times, fuzzy. Her observations, however, are insightful and show the keen intellect that no amount of booze could make fuzzy. She is the one who sees what the rest cannot or will not see and says what the rest cannot or will not say. She also seems to hold many family secrets and understands more deeply than any of them, that the only thing holding the family together is Agnes' sense of propriety and Tobias' sense of duty.

K Callan (that's how she bills herself) and Bruce French as Edna and Harry, the "best friends" were less effective as the bland, bewildering interlopers who decide on the spur of the moment (after a joint panic attack) to come live with Agnes and Tobias. They wind up taking Julia's bedroom on the night Julia is coming home for comfort over her fourth failed marriage. Due to a 40-year relationship they feel they have the perfect and unquestionable right to simply invade the home of their "best friends". Unfortunately, Ms. Callan chose to play her character in a very detached, almost uninterested way. This lent a jarring dissonance with her later scene of righteous indignation, which felt wrong somehow; she'd been so unassuming, why should she react with such ire? Mr. French merely delivered his lines in a perfunctory manner, only coming fully into character once, when he touched René on the shoulder. He quickly ducked back into a pleasant sort of blandness and I could not tell if this was what the character was supposed to be like, or if it was the actor's decision to present Harry in this manner. It had the effect of making his rather unlikable character a little less despicable at the climactic moment; i.e. - making it seem his decision stemmed less from selfish disingenuousness and more from unthinking inconsiderateness.

Anyway, due to Edna and Harry's unexpected appearance on Agnes and Toby's doorstep, Claire brings up the fact that Harry and Toby once both cheated on their wives with the same girl, an event that continues to plague Tobias with guilt and Agnes with self-satisfied martyrdom. It is also discovered that Tobias momentary indiscretion was caused by the grief surrounding the death of his son, a fact that makes the indiscretion all-too-damning to Agnes. Harry, it is learned, continued the affair with the girl and Tobias feels compelled to maintain his friendship with Harry, a relationship he doesn't bother to analyze but which is built on lies, guilt and indiscretion.

This is Toby's way of coping. He prefers to hide from facts, is uncomfortable stating his desires or needs and holds them all at arms reach. He tells himself he is a dutiful father or husband or friend. He defines those duties as accepting his daughter's immaturity and providing her succor despite the advice of those (Claire and Agnes) who would insist Julia needs to stand more on her own two feet instead of always having a safety net. He accepts his wife's brittle, waspish judgements, as well as her grandiloquent sarcasm and does his best to act as buffer between her and her sister, Claire, and their daughter, Julia. He accepts Claire's overweening advice, avoids her boozy flirtations and flinches on the judgement point of her too-sharp tongue as she makes her unvarnished observations about his failures, his frailties and his friends. He accepts all of these things as part of his self-imposed punishment over past sins, and calls it his "duty". Toby obviously loves his family, such as it is. He loves them in the only way he knows how, and with as much as he can give.

However, when Toby's sense of duty to his friends necessarily wars with his sense of familial duty, the result is the breaking of a facade and the revelation of a sad, frightened, bitterly angry soul, trapped in the agonies of the past and present, unable to break free of his duties even to find peace or to bring himself happiness. In the end, he finally makes a choice and finds that the choice has already been made for him, emphasizing his ineffectualness, reducing him to a cipher.

He is not, he comes to realize, truly needed for *himself*. His wife needs him to justify her pain. His daughter needs him to assuage her pain. His sister-in-law needs him not at all, but likes him well enough, even loves him. But despite the tempation she presents, his sense of duty prevents him from accepting her overtures, even if they would present him some measure of happiness... even if his wife maintains a chilly remoteness with him that extends to their bedroom. And his friends... they turn out to be mere acquaintances of 40 years, neither giving nor truly loving nor really even 'friends'.

The story ends with a sad, barely audible plea from Toby that is punctuated with the finality of Edna and Harry's departure from his home, and possibly from his life. They don't need him. Only Agnes does... as the sounding board for her continued pontifications. This is a position he knows quite well, and does quite well despite his loathing to do it. After 40 years of it, he simply doesn't know what else to do.

Can I say "Wow"?

First the particulars. The set was minimalistic, more a reading than a staged play, although the actors used glasses, tables and sometimes touched each other or addressed each other rather than merely reading the lines. It was effective in it's way, although I'd love to see a fully staged performance some day.

As each actor delivered their lines, they'd sit back on stools ready for the purpose. It was good the stools were there. The climactic scene where René rages, flails and finally breaks down with the realization of his futility was riveting and heartbreaking, and I noted René had to physically calm himself after. He departed to his stool and instead of just sitting on it as he'd done before, he literally slumped on it, letting it hold him up as he caught his breath and gathered himself.

Need I say that René's portrayal was completely stunning? Several people were wiping at eyes or sniffling at his heartrending moment of realization on stage. It was a moment almost frighteningly honest in it's intensity and difficult *not* to respond to. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who wanted to step up on stage and put my arms around poor Toby!

I have yet to stop discussing the play and certain points of it keep springing to mind, so it was definitely worth the time and extra effort to go see it. If it heads in your direction, I strongly suggest you see it and take your friends. :)