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CLOSE UP SPACE Send This Review to a Friend
Molly Smith Metzler’s play presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club gets off to a promising start as David Hyde Pierce, playing Paul, a book editor, discourses wittily about verbose writing, illustrating how he cuts ruthlessly on an over-written letter from an upscale school telling him why his misbehaving daughter is being expelled. As he talks, we see the progress of his deletions projected on screen behind him. It is very funny and an explanation for the play’s odd title, which refers to jargon about closing up space between letters, and by extension, words. The concept can be dear to anyone who writes and has relations with editors.
The title is also symbolic of the effort on the part of the father to close space between him and his daughter, Harper, ferociously played by Colby Minifie, who is hurting from her mentally-ill mother’s suicide and resents her father. The promising opening is quickly frittered away by what descends into a dramatic mess. Harper speaks in her acquired Russian, a further sign of her alienation.
Paul’s assistant Steve, portrayed with comic exaggeration by Michael Chernus, decides to sleep in the office in a pup tent he has installed, a weird development to say the least. Rosie Perez plays the firm’s major author, Vanessa Finn Adams, who is furious at what she considers the over-editing of her manuscript, all the worse, since she has a romantic interest in Paul. Jessica DiGiovanni makes the most of her thankless role as Bailey, an intern.
An office robbery thickens the plot. By this time our patience is worn thin despite the efforts by director Leigh Silverman to inject life into Metzler’s musings. It takes a lot of silly huffing and puffing to get to a scene in which father and daughter face each other as if the space has been closed. But it is too late to close the space between an audience seeking a worthy play and what actually unfolds on stage despite the best efforts of a good cast. I did admire Todd Rosenthal’s scenic design giving space and depth to the smartly conceived office set. At the Manhattan Theatre Club, New York City Center Stage I, 131 West 55th Street. Phone: 212-581-1212.
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