Almost 15 years ago, David Mamet wrote a creepily lovely little play called The Cryptogram. It's a tucked-in domestic drama -- slight of plot, just three characters -- delicate enough that if mishandled, you're left turning to the person next to you and asking if anything actually happened. But in between The Cryptogram's silences and symbolism lurks sheer terror. I was reminded of it during Jez Butterworth's Parlour Song -- itself a slight, three-character domestic drama that's debuting at Mamet's own Atlantic Theater Company. Both plays are meant to burrow into essential anxiety, into the fear that part of the world is deliberately hidden and shall always remain so. The obvious difference is that Mamet's is from a child's perspective, Butterworth's from a lover's -- and yet this is not why Mamet's play is a devastating one and Butterworth's left me turning to the person in the next seat. Through structural insecurity, Parlour Song ultimately comes off as a bit of a tourist -- it visits the dark places of the soul, but it's not really at home there.
Butterworth's plot mechanics hinge on a quiet marriage between demolition specialist Ned (a tensely coiled Chris Bauer) and housewife Joy (the radiant Emily Mortimer). Every time Ned leaves town on a job -- to level a shopping mall or an old hotel -- he returns to find something of his missing. He suspects his wife. It's late summer, and if it's a bit arid -- the play's English setting is in the midst of a record drought -- the symbolism is thick. Ned blows things up but describes himself as "safe" in a "buffer zone"; Joy confides a yearning "to be devoured in two or three big bites" by a shark; meanwhile, next-door neighbor Dale (Jonathan Cake) gets his head stuck where it doesn't belong. There are shivering nightmares, secret allotments, and games of Scrabble where verbal intercourse is equated with sexual.
Threaded through all this is some lovely writing and even lovelier acting. (It's especially impressive that the chiseled Cake -- in his third major stage outing this year -- continues to find time to work on his acting chops even with all the hours he must spend in the gym.) But Butterworth's funny, poetic writing, Neil Pepe's sensitive direction, and lighting designer Kenneth Posner's defining shadows only flirt with trenchancy. The dreamlike mood is rudely punctuated by unnecessary narration (usually from Dale) and projected titles along the lines of "Everything is disappearing." These stylistic crutches point up Parlour Song's failure to arrive at a balance between the abstract and the corporeal. And, regrettably, they keep the proceedings feeling a little too safe. I was hoping the talented Butterworth might force the audience a bit out of its buffer zone.
Presented by and at Atlantic Theater Company,
336 W. 20th St., NYC.
March 5-April 6. Tue.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.
(212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com.
Casting by Telsey + Company.