Imagine the worst dinner party you’ve ever thrown, featuring guests who arrive unconscionably late, bully and abuse you while hard-selling real estate, then stick you with the bill for the ultra-pricey wine they’ve brought—and all this in the shadow of calamity, like the pandemic or 9/11. Sounds like fun, no?
This is the world of “Things with Friends,” the dystopian dark comedy by Kristoffer Diaz now making its debut at American Blues Theater under the direction of Dexter Bullard. The dinner party at the show’s center is just an intimate little thing hosted by a middle-aged couple in their posh New York high-rise apartment for their closest friends, who were once neighbors but have since moved to New Jersey. By the end of the evening, depicted in real time over the show’s ninety minutes, both “things” and “friends” have taken on a new and sinister meaning. And the promised meal, complete with the aroma of seared meat wafting over the audience, fails to satisfy—as, sadly, does this bravely experimental, atmospheric and idea-rich but less-than-coherent play.
In the background of the play—and supposedly visible from Grant Sabin’s subtly canted, off-kilter domestic set, with its marble-and-granite kitchen and generically stylish objets d’art—is what used to be the George Washington Bridge between Manhattan and New Jersey. It has recently collapsed, victim of an ecological disaster that has left New York City poised on the brink of destruction. The nature of the disaster is one of those things that isn’t discussed in polite society in what the play’s narrator—who distances us in Brechtian fashion from the incidents onstage, and is listed in the program as “NYC”—refers to as “present day-ish” New York.
After the initial exchange of histrionic gestures of affection, it quickly becomes clear that, if guests Chabby and Vy are friends, their hosts need no enemies. The streetwise NYC describes the couple as “slick,” but underneath the glibness and sheen lurks a shark-like aggression, coupled with a deep contempt for folks a little slower to see things as they are and to make the most of them.
“We’ve moved to a better place [i.e., New Jersey],” says Chabby, with a smile like dry ice. “We’re here to spread the gospel of said better place.”
Well, that’s why they pretend to be visiting their old pals, Burt and Adele: to persuade them to leave the big city that they see in MAGA terms as crumbling and lawless, and to join them in the safer-seeming suburbs. In fact, their goal is to take possession by hook or by crook of Burt and Adele’s twenty-seventh-floor home, located high above the increasingly chaotic, waterlogged city streets. At first, Burt and Adele seem sandbagged by this unexpected attack by what they thought were friends and allies. Eventually, the tables turn when Chabby’s and Vy’s free-spirited, relatively sane daughter Joony arrives. Gravitating to her parents’ friends, rather than her parents, she shifts the balance of power in the room, disclosing the desperation underneath her folks’ crazed, ruthless scheming.
The play vividly shows how crisis brings out the hidden truth of people, for better or worse. As what’s supposed to be a cozy gathering over rich food and fine wine turns into a vicious battle over real estate, we see basic civility and hospitality crumble as completely as the George Washington Bridge. On-the-make couple Chabby and Vy reveal themselves as perfect crisis capitalists, crushing anyone who stands in their way while earnestly reassuring them that it’s for their own good.
The show weakens as it goes along, however, and the second half of this intermissionless production, after the appearance of young Joony, rambles and wobbles toward a depressing conclusion. The tight if bizarre logic of the first half dissipates into random weirdness, climaxing in a prolonged bit of stage business involving a pan of sweet potatoes, which is more gross than funny or telling. Aspiring to a Harold Pinter-like enigmatic absurdism, the play ends up telling too much and pushing too hard. Absurdism is meant to be an assault on the cliches and simplifications of conventional dramatic structure, the sort of good-guys-versus-bad-guys tale that “Things with Friends” boils down to.
That said, the performers portraying the bad guys are awfully good. Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel is note-perfect as the outwardly charming, inwardly steely Vy. She seems to have undergone some sort of Body Snatchers-like personality transformation since moving to the suburbs, obtaining a broker’s license because “it’s just something you do when you go out there.” Jon Hudson Odom puts a dark, scary charge into Chabby, the fixer who is convinced there’s money to be made in end times hustling, but who loses his mojo when his daughter’s presence reveals his failure as a father and human being.
Audrey Billings and Casey Campbell have solidity and presence as bemused hosts Adele and Burt, respectively, but the characters are underwritten, leaving the actors with less to work with. They come off as sympathetic, at least in comparison to their nasty frenemies. But they’re too passive and useless to counter the selfishness and opportunism of Chabby and Vy. Burt is an engineer and bridge-builder who responds to the disappearance of the great suspension bridge near his home by doing nothing at all and waiting for the apparently non-functioning authorities to take action. And Adele continues to address Vy as a bosom buddy long after she has shown herself to be a bosom serpent. What exactly do Adele and Burt represent: The voice of reason and optimism? Soggy liberal good intentions? Head-in-the-sand denialism? Impossible to say: the parts are too vaguely rendered. And the question of how these two utterly different couples, with such opposing personalities and worldviews, could have become friends in the first place is never answered.
The cast is rounded off by Maya Lou Hlava, who imparts a beguiling mix of rebelliousness and innocence to the role of Joony, and Nate Santana, whose one-man Greek chorus is suitably tough and irreverent, translating the play’s literally insular view of New York for the benefit of out-of-towners.
Acted with gonzo energy, directed with taut pacing and high intensity, “Things with Friends” works to some extent at the level of mood and theme. But the plot flounders, moving toward baroque complexity rather than clean resolution. There’s more than a touch of nihilism in the play’s apocalyptic vision of the near future, a sense that doom is not only impending but well-deserved. In the universe of this play, one is either decent or strong. In our own moment, though—a moment when basic urban systems and infrastructure really are decaying, and a deranged president responds to deep-rooted social and economic problems by declaring war on America’s great cities—it’s clear we need to be both.
“Things with Friends” runs through October 5 at American Blues Theater, 5627 North Lincoln. Tickets are $39.50-$49.50 and are available online at americanbluestheater.com, by phone at (773)654-3103 or at the box office.
