John Guare's 1977 "Landscape of the Body" is a problematic mix of theatre of the absurd and kitchen-sink drama. The blending he managed so craftily in his acclaimed "House of Blue Leaves" is not achieved here, and the uneasiness of "Landscape" is not overcome in this revival.
The play tells of Betty Yearn, a youngish mother who travels from Maine to New York's Greenwich Village with her teenage son to retrieve her wayward sister. But when sister Rosalie is killed by a hit-and-run bicycle, Betty's forced to take up Rosalie's career in porno films. Betty's New York life takes yet another dark turn when she's confronted by a secret admirer, takes an unfortunate trip with him, and returns to find her son decapitated.
We learn all this, plus the circumstances of the son's murder, in flashback, as a detective interrogates Betty. It adds up to a lot of improbable plotting that eventually becomes wearing, and things aren't helped by absurdist interpolations and musical interludes. While lacking the rich humanity of "Blue Leaves," there are nevertheless passages demonstrating Guare's talent to create sympathetic characters and make poignant observations on contemporary life. Whether these are worth wading through the play's excess baggage in an uneven production is questionable.
Kimilee Bryant portrays Betty with obvious determination to make her believable, but exudes a winsomeness that flattens out the character's mercurial moods. There's creditable work by Jessica Allen as the hard-edged Rosalie and Ian Campbell Dunn, who, while obviously older than Betty's 14-year-old son, captures the youthful yearnings and stresses of the role, probably the play's most plausible character.
Director Terry Schreiber overemphasizes the script's absurdist elements, staging it within a one-ring circus design and forcing an overly exaggerated comic style for some scenes. There's also some unimpressive pre-show and intermission clowning by a quartet of performers.