Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

I’ve gotten tired of thuds. They are particularly obnoxious in the coming attractions for films in which every other cut is accompanied by a huge WHOMP! In combination with the images of explosions and fireballs, the effect can be numbing. The relentless noise suggests that the filmmakers don’t believe the subject matter might be sufficient on its own merits to hold the audience’s attention.

There’s a lot of unnecessary racket in the theater, too. Director Adam Penford thuds it up good at the beginning of James Graham’s Punch, currently playing on Broadway under the sponsorship of Manhattan Theater Club. I don’t think Graham needs this infusion of artificial adrenaline. Based on a true story, his tale about a teenager named Jacob Dunne who slugs a stranger just for the hell of it — and what becomes of him when that stranger dies — is sufficiently compelling to not need garnishing. Though the leading character is Jacob, arguably the most important decision made in the story is made by the parents of the young man he slugged, David and Joan (played by Sam Robards and Victoria Clark). Initially bitter at the light sentence Jacob receives for causing their son’s death (he is charged with manslaughter), at the urging of an advocate for restorative justice they make contact with Jacob. This initial contact turns into a relationship that is healing for all parties, as David and Joan support Jacob’s efforts to redirect his life away from hooliganism to working with disaffected youth to steer them away from the habit of violence that he had once been addicted to. (In real life, David and Joan continue to collaborate with Jacob on his work.)

Yes, it’s a story of redemption. And yes, the story feels a little familiar, and I bet most in the audience can anticipate where it will go. But the familiarity is offset by the vividness of Graham’s writing and the uniformly fine playing by the ensemble who, except for Harrison, play multiple roles. It is good enough that it would play well without the WHOMPS!

A production with a blessed lack of whomping is Preston Max Allen’s Caroline, the new production at Manhaatan Class Company. In fact, in its non-whompiness it reminds me a bit of Horton Foote’s A Trip to Bountiful. They are hardly the same play, but there are similarities. Both feature a leading female character returning home in the hope of resolving a personal issue, and much of both take place on American highways. But the biggest resemblance is in technique. I have had cause to give a second look to a fair amount of Foote recently, and what particularly strikes me is his avoidance of easy conflict and showy scenes. This doesn’t mean that nobody raises their voice in Foote, and certainly there are some heated exchanges in Caroline, but the confrontations don’t feel forced, and the characters don’t get caught with speechifying on behalf of the writers.

Maddie, a single mom in her late twenties, is an addict in recovery with a nine-year-old child named Caroline. (We discover when we need to that Caroline is a trans child.) When her latest domestic situation results in Caroline being injured, Maddie decides to leave. With Caroline’s arm in a sling, Maddie heads to Evanston, Illinois where her parents live. (Irrelevant fact: I was raised in Evanston, Illinois. It’s a fine destination.) She arrives, surprising her mother (her father is away on business) and we learn more of the circumstances of Maddie’s alienation from her parents, including Maddie’s having engaged in behavior bordering on the unforgivable. But Rhea (Maddie’s mother) puts some real effort into repairing the breach between them.

One of the pleasures of writing this blog is that, chiming in after others have posted their notices, I am in a position to disagree with them. And I’m now going to disagree with what Laura Collins-Hughes wrote in her piece in The New York Times. Collins-Hughes objected to “a late-arriving plot twist so severe that it’s as if Allen has wrested the wheel from his characters. ….. We don’t know Rhea well, really; maybe she has always been a steely apparatchik in her marriage. Maybe her agreeing with her husband’s radical terms for helping Maddie and Caroline is to be expected. ….. Dramaturgically, it is too easy: tension ginned up, humanity permitted on just one side. Caroline, so beautifully nuanced until then, deserves better than that.”

What she objects to is part of what I admire about the script. Yes, having watched Maddie and Caroline together, we believe in the bond of love and responsibility between the two. Emotionally we are on their side. But, given what we learn about Maddie’s past behavior, when Rhea makes her offer, I don’t find it such a cruel or unreasonable one. Rhea has no compelling reason to trust Maddie. What she proposes is designed to give Maddie the opportunity to regain Rhea’s trust. Allen has pulled off a neat dramaturgical gambit – he has set the viewer’s heart and head against each other.

The cast is terrific – Chloë Grace Moretz and River Lipe-Smith as Maddie and Caroline (I join with others in believing Lipe-Smith’s performance to be so finely modulated that I am amazed an actor this age pulls it off), and Amy Landecker as Rhea (as well as a distinct cameo in a scene set in a diner). And David Cromer’s direction is immaculate. Preston Max Allen is a writer new to me. I look forward to where he goes from here.