Stephen Karam describes his play, which arrives from New York festooned with awards, as a “family thriller”. While there is nothing wrong with a collision of genres, the attempt to combine a troubled family drama with the tropes of a schlocky horror movie creates the wrong kind of unease. It is as if Eugene O’Neill has gone into business with George A Romero.
We watch the Blake family coming together for a Thanksgiving meal in Brigid and Richard’s New York apartment, where things go bump in the daytime. What starts as a celebration turns sour as tensions are revealed. Brigid’s dad, Erik, is given to sweat-inducing nightmares; her mum, a staunch Catholic, is an office-manager angry at being passed over for promotion; her sister is trying to cope not just with the loss of her job and her lesbian lover but a severe case of ulcerative colitis. I haven’t even mentioned Brigid’s grandmother, who is in the latter stages of dementia. Behind the play lurks a fear of poverty, unemployment and ill-health that clearly speaks to many Americans. But, aside from the overuse of ominous aural effects, the play’s portrait of a family’s economic malaise is impaired by a climactic crisis that has more to do with sex than money.
Joe Mantello’s hyper-realistic production, where people constantly talk over each other, brings us the utterly convincing Broadway cast as the fractured family. Reed Birney as Erik perfectly embodies the stolidity of a school-maintenance man prey to panic. Jayne Houdyshell is equally impressive as his wife who, while devoted to her faith and good works, nurses a justifiable resentment. Sarah Steele as Brigid, a thwarted musician, and Cassie Beck as her sorely tried sibling are also unimprovable.
I enjoyed the acting very much. But while Karam, as he showed in Speech and Debate at London’s Trafalgar Studios last year, has a lively intelligence, this new 90-minute play doesn’t give his awareness of the terror lurking beneath family rituals room to breathe.
At Hampstead Theatre, London, until 13 October.
