On The Way Down

All the characters of Michael Rudez's new play, On The Way Down, know what it's like to deal with the "too-much" of life: Browning (Steven Todd Smith) took a four-year mental sabbatical, Stevenson (Rocco Chierichella) buried himself in business, and Josie (Lindsay Wolf) chose to forget things. However, their individual escapes become a prison when the rest of New York City decides to attempt the same weekend getaway: it seems like there are as many tourists in the Hamptons as there are grains of sand. Things start going wrong with the simplest of things--all the bakeries have sold out of bread--and worsen as these three friends are forced to actually live with themselves.

Good premise, but Rudez cripples the show by molding it around Josie, a rather unreliable and painfully fake character. It takes Josie at least three attempts to enter a room, and On The Way Down follows too closely in those insecure footsteps, so constantly shifting its attention that it makes no progress. Furthermore, Rudez's characters speak directly about everything but the plot, keeping things as cryptic as Josie's forgotten memories. It's a neat trick to keep the audience as much in the dark as Josie, but then again, Josie grows comatose: is that what he wants from the audience? Such tricks also draw undue attention to dialogue that is serviceable on the surface, but clunky underneath. (The words "pshaw" and "square" are used entirely unironically.) It's no surprise, then, that Rudez excels at writing Stevenson--this arrogant, womanizing, big-time dick is all surfaces, and his outsized opinions on meaningless things--like Tilda Swenson's unattractiveness--help to divert attention from the threadbare plot.

As the boisterous Stevenson, Chierichella is the most comfortable actor on stage; better off than Wolf, who is forced to hide Josie behind a wide smile that reduces her emotions to a single dimension, and Smith, whose Browning is so totally defined by his former depression that he lurks in the background even as he speaks. They're all so tightly wound, trying to hide the plot, that it's hard to tell if they're skilled. Director Dan Waldron does them no favors: the actions he gives them are so irrelevant that they only make the characters more concealed. (For example: the play begins at 9:00 a.m., with Josie returning to their beach house; she immediately starts to take the clean dishes off the table, and Browning helps her store them in kitchen cabinets. If there's a point to this action--she's not obsessive-compulsive--it's drowned out in distraction.)

One wants to give young, new work like this the benefit of the doubt, but that's all On The Way Down gives its audience: doubt. (To avoid spoiling anything, I'll be cryptic: what's up with the kiss in the third scene? What's the deal with that phone message?) Life has given these characters lemons--there's a big bowl of them on the kitchen table--but Rudez doesn't do anything with them, and his vague result of a play grows sourer by the moment.