'Houses': A mix of obscurity and illumination

Much can be said about Richard Greenberg's play Safe as Houses, currently at McCarter, in terms of the visual picture of the first scene. The play opens late at night. A house is dark, but light filters through the windows. Two lovers – an older man and a younger woman – speak furtively on the threshold between the deck and the house as a young man hidden in an armchair listens in. The scene is one of clouded light, a combination of confusion and illumination. So too does Safe as Houses alternate between moments of clarity and obscurity.

Greenberg provides little exposition and forces the audience to piece together what has happened in regards to the plot. The play is written so that this is not difficult: many of the plot lines are fairly simple. The eavesdropper, Robert Siegal (Gus Rogerson), is visiting his friend Scotty Landis, when he overhears Scotty's father, Ken (David Margulies), describe his affair with Tina, Scotty's and his younger brother Tim's caretaker. The action occurs over the course of 15 years, spread out in seven to eight year intervals over the three acts. The only tendency towards unnecessary exposition involves several unneeded and out-of place soliloquies made by Robert that thankfully disappear by the third act.

Aspects of the plot that seem at first unclear are soon rendered understandable by the solid and convincing performances of the actors. Rogerson especially grows more believable over the course of the show. In the first act, he begins the play rather ungracefully as an awkward young man of twenty-two, perhaps because of the difference between his age and the character's. For the remainder of the production, however, Rogerson displays his thorough understanding of the character.

Margulies, a veteran of the stage, goes through a series of life changes with Ken: He divorces his wife for Tina, kicks his mistress out of the house, copes badly with the death of his beloved son from cancer and finally deteriorates mentally in a bout with senility and cancer. While at times monotone, Margulies gives a solid, natural performance with crisp gestures. He is equally convincing in the first act as the sarcastic father and in the last act as the debilitated old man.

Michael Learned stars as his wife Irene. Learned, who has much experience on stage as well as in television and film is strong in a fairly lackluster, two-dimensional role. Her character's transformation does not include the growth necessary to match the passage of time seen in her husband's development.

Not faring quite as well are Fredrick Weller as Scotty in the first act and Tim in the third, and Barbara Garrick who portrays Tina. Both of the actors words are at times garbled or inaudible.

The play's failure to explore deeply some of the play's issues prevents many potentially poignant moments. While Robert appears to be the most sympathetic character, details of his life are unsatisfyingly left largely unexplored. The audience wants to know more about his motives, his desires, his relationships to Scotty and Ken. Though Tim is also very interesting, pivotal to the action of the resolution, we receive almost no information about his character either.

Intriguing ideas are also hinted at but rapidly and disappointingly dropped. Greenberg shifts quickly between the themes of age, love, loss and friendship often without allowing the audience a full sense of their relation to the action onstage.

Nevertheless, there are some especially touching moments. When the old Ken faces fits of madness, he gives his speech with a spotlight illuminating his head and the rest of the stage dark, suggesting his isolation from people and reality. Another interesting theatrical moment occurs when the insane Tina nearly trips off the stage into the audience.

McCarter's artistic director Emily Mann's direction is polished, although she occasionally leaves characters stagnant in their positions. Her visual pictures could have been at times more stimulating, although Thomas Lynch's set design certainly provides much to ponder.

Playwright Greenberg attended Princeton and consequently includes several referential jokes. Robert describes how he met Scotty's girlfriend – she was the annoying one in his history precept. Ken calls Princeton "that finishing school in New Jersey."

Despite the occasional stagnancy, Safe as Houses often succeeds at attaining humor. Some of the lines in the play involve a sad, ironic spin. Robert jokes at his own expense: "Nothing I set in motion seems to move." Similarly, the final scene is both funny and disturbing in its interplay between the "punk" brother and demented father, ending on a note of both hope and confusion.

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In many ways, Safe as Houses resembles the set of the final scene as well as it does the first scene, once again the same room of the Landis house. Here it is hardly recognizable due to the profusion of different objects (lovely antiques that Ken collects in his old age). The play's fragmentation echoes this, a combination of different scenes, ideas and moods. The view out of the windows is largely obscured, as is the view into the lives of the characters.

Like the room, Greenberg's Safe as Houses is richly textured, but at times the clutter of different aspects of the piece conceals the deeper meaning and ideas that are sometimes, unfortunately, not brought into focus.

('Safe as Houses' plays at McCarter through April 5. Call 683-8000 for tickets.)