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TRUST Send This Review to a Friend
The title of the play “Trust” might be better spelled as “Trussed.” Bondage is one of the goodies offered by Sutton Foster as the no-nonsense dominatrix Prudence early in Paul Weitz’s provocatively entertaining and superbly acted play offered by the Second Stage Theatre. Although the work is richly comic it also pursues the idea of who people really are inside and the trust needed to break out of one’s emotional confines, a serious side that emerges without being labored. Best of all is the ensemble acting that makes the most of the funny lines and outrageous situations provided by the author.
Sutton Foster is a prime example. Her range is admirable, as proven in her musical theater roles and as witnessed in her delightful and freewheeling night club act (See Cabaret). Here she makes her entrance as dominance personified and is quite a sight in her leather gear with a harsh, brittle voice that goes with the outfit. But as we soon learn, Prudence has a complicated personality. Hating how she sees herself for who she was and what she did, she gets a charge out of being in charge, all of which fits her fierce desire for independence. Meanwhile, as we learn, she is subjugated in a nasty personal relationship.
Zach Braff also gives a finely tuned performance as Harry, who arrives “on a whim” to a session with Prudence. He is a reluctant client humorously unnerved by the paraphernalia of the trade. The situation takes a hilarious turn when he recognizes Prudence as a high school classmate. Harry is obscenely rich as a result of having built and sold an internet business that has made him a multi- billionaire. But he is unfulfilled with a lousy marriage that money can’t rectify. The relationship he wants to have with Prudence on a different basis than her work becomes key to the play’s musings.
Harry’s wife Aleeza is played effectively by Ari Graynor as a depressive who shows no interest in much of anything, including when Harry is under the bed covers doing his best to arouse her with oral sex. The scene becomes hilarious, punctuated by something very funny that Harry does in revenge. But Aleeza also has her hidden side and needs a form of liberation, which you may be able to predict after she meets Prudence.
The fourth player in this dream cast is Bobby Cannavale as Morton, a failure in life whose one show of strength is his brutal domination of Prudence and the squelching of her growing efforts at rebellion. Cannavale manages to be tragic and uproariously funny at the same time. We know that he will be outsmarted in his clumsy attempt to blackmail Harry, but how this happens is a comic delight, and yet we become aware, by means of the writing and Cannavale’s canny acting, that within him there also lurks a man who desperately needs to shed his feelings of inadequacy.
The idea of using domination and submission as a metaphor for patterns of life is hardly a new one. But Weitz manipulates it masterfully by wrapping it in high comedy with characters as interesting vehicles for engaging performances. Peter DuBois has directed with a sure hand for blending the conflicting elements of laughter and drama. All is abetted by Alexander Dodge’s extremely functional set design that enables appropriate furniture to slide in and out of walls and provide perfect suggested environments for each change of scene with minimum fuss. At the Second Stage Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street. Phone: 212-246-4422.
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