Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Tracy Letts’ LINDA VISTA arrives on Broadway, Steppenwolf realness intact

• By drediman
• October 14, 2019
• No Comments

Jim True-Frost, Cora Vander Broek, Ian Barford, and Sally Murphy in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of Tracy Letts’ “Linda Vista” at the Helen Hayes Theatre, courtesy of Second Stage Theater. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Amidst an unusually crowded Broadway season of high profile new plays is Steppenwolf Theater Company’s production of Tracy Letts’ latest work Linda Vista, which opened last week on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre, courtesy of Second Stage Theater. The play is very much like Wheeler —  the character at the nexus of the piece — a destructive middle-aged man who senses the inevitability of his very own extinction and acts accordingly. Indeed, the play is a curious beast these days on Broadway; it’s neither on the sexy cutting edge of the new zeitgeist (Slave Play), a star-driven vehicle (The Sound Inside), nor a durational theatrical “event” (The Inheritance, The Lehman Trilogy).

Linda Vista, which I had seen when it premiered two years ago un Chicago at the legendary theater company, is a typical example of Mr. Letts as a playwright (he’s best known for having penned the sensational Pulitzer- and Tony-winning epic August: Osage County). The play is at once tough, stubbornly set in its ways, and at times disarmingly sensitive. In other words, it’s a “man’s” play – a rarity these days – that’s written, directed, designed and about (white) men. Ultimately, I admired its insistence for our empathy for its point of view, which somehow gives the play a refreshing and defiant new resonance, especially in this rightly opinionated age of anti-toxic masculinity. This isn’t to say that it’s a perfect play. Far from it; Linda Vista is often frustrating in both content and form, which oddly distinguishes the work.

It’s great to see so many familiar Windy City talent in New York on the Helen Hayes stage. Veteran Chicago director Dexter Bullard’s work (he stages the play on a smartly-utilized rotating set by Todd Rosenthal) – essentially the same one I saw at the Steppenwolf – is as straightforward as they come, which plays to the work’s strengths. Steppenwolf ensemble regulars, including the likes of Ian Barford, Sally Murphy, and Jim True-Frost, are as grounded as ever, giving performances that moved me with their unadorned honesty and realness. In the central role of Wheeler, Mr. Barford boldly refuses to shy away from the character’s tragically unshakeable unsavoriness; the actor attacks his assignment head on, to stealthily devastating effect.

RECOMMENDED

LINDA VISTA
Broadway, Play
Helen Hayes Theatre / Second Stage Theater / Steppenwolf Theatre Company
2 hours, 45 minutes (with one intermission)
Through November 10