Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – John Patrick Shanley’s efficiently plotted rom-com BROOKLYN LAUNDRY completes the playwright’s unlikely retrospective season

• By drediman
• April 11, 2024
• No Comments

This past weekend at New York City Center, I finally had the chance to catch up with Manhattan Theater Club’s Off-Broadway production of Brooklyn Laundry by John Patrick Shanley. Shanley’s latest play completes what has become an unlikely retrospective season for the celebrated American playwright, following this past fall’s forceful Off-Broadway revival of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea starring Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott and this spring’s major — if somewhat tepid — Broadway revival of Doubt at the Todd Haimes Theatre courtesy of Roundabout Theatre Company.

In essence, Brooklyn Laundry is a play about human support and the economics of life, coincidentally two themes explored by another MTC production, Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living. But unlike that Pulitzer Prize-winning play’s hard-hitting drama, Shanley’s new work strikes a gentler chord as the playwright’s attempt at romantic comedy. In cadence, the play strikes me as landing somewhere in between Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Doubt — animating working class folk with a brash vitality, while ensuring thoughtful, if turbulent, inner lives for the play’s quartet of characters. Even if the late-play revelation (no spoilers here!) registers somewhat as a dramatic device, it’s evident that Shanley has deep affection for the characters, particularly the play’s three beleaguered sisters.

The efficiently-plotted play — which boasts a running time of just 75-minutes — has been directed with a sure hand on a handsome rotating set (scenic design by Santo Loquasto) by Shanley himself. As the two central characters skirting around love and commitment, David Zayas as the laundromat owner Owen and Cecily Strong as his customer Fran are a delight, and there’s obvious chemistry between them. As Fran’s two older sisters, Andrea Syglowski and Florencia Lozano also make a notable impact with their incisive acting in their respective single scenes. As a closing note, there are pleasures to be had seeing the play late into its run — the performances seem to have settled into their natural rhythms, giving comfort for the actors to instinctually navigate Shanley’s sturdy dialogue.

RECOMMENDED

BROOKLYN LAUNDRY
Off-Broadway, Play
Manhattan Theatre Company at New York City Center
1 hour, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Through April 14