NY Review: 'As Wide As I Can See'

In the opening moments of "As Wide as I Can See," the play's adult protagonist, Dean (Ryan Barry), looks awkward as he tries to float in a kiddie pool. The plot carries out this metaphor, presenting Dean and his 30-something high-school friends, who share his backyard in the town where they were children, fitting uncomfortably into their grown-up shoes. This dramatic theme is fine, if familiar, but playwright Mark Snyder has filled his story with so many ill-conceived dramatic ideas and forced emotional theatrics that the play feels too big for its own britches.

The tone veers from dramedy to sex farce to psycho-thriller to after-school special. Dean, we soon discover, has lost his job as a local journalist. He is left to wrestle with a bossy live-in girlfriend (Jessica, played as a put-upon stiff by Julie Leedes), who insists he grow up and find a new career; his best friend (with girlfriend and two kids), who ties him to his youthful immaturity; and a former high-school classmate who reappears to remind him of his former ambitions.

Dean's relationship with Jessica feels artificial, and it revives uncomfortably old-fashioned gender politics when she is accused of stealing Dean's manhood. The blast-from-the-past friend, Charlotte (Mélisa Breiner-Sanders, whose task is Olympian), appears refreshingly mature at first, but she soon becomes a psychic case, demanding retribution for a past deed that Dean never committed. She ends the play as Blanche DuBois, hypnotized into coming home by her cheerful, upper-middle-age, deus-ex-machina husband (Conan McCarty). The derailment of Charlotte's character takes the heat out of the more serious tensions—between past and future, ambition and pragmatism—that Snyder is trying to explore.

Director Dan Horrigan is overly seduced by the earnestness of the proceedings, directing the actors into Big Confrontations and Obvious Symbols (sometimes both at once, in the kiddie pool). Barry tries to mitigate the melodrama by underplaying Dean, to some success, while Kay Capasso, as Nan, the best friend's girlfriend, benefits from portraying the one character with reliable common sense. At the play's end, she demands that everyone go back inside and grow up.

Presented by At Hand Theatre Company at Here Arts Center, 145 Sixth Ave., NYC. Feb 29–March 10. Tue.–Sun., 8:30 p.m. (Additional performance Sat., March 10, 4 p.m.) (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.here.org. Casting by Judy Bowman Casting.