Three New Plays Struggle With Information

Carol Rosegg

Bio engineering: Mercedes Ruehl and Larry Bryggman in Occupant

Details

Occupant
By Edward Albee
Signature Theatre
555 West 42nd Street
212-244-7529

Saved
By John Dempsey, Rinne Groff, and Michael Friedman
Playwrights Horizons
416 West 42nd Street
212-279-4200

Len, Asleep in Vinyl
By Carly Mensch
McGinn/Cazale Theatre
2162 Broadway
212-246-4422

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More About

• Edward Albee
• Louise Nevelson
• Eugene Scribe
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

And what's Second Stage doing, putting Carly Mensch's Len, Asleep in Vinyl, a wholly unready novice work, up in front of critics, even in one of its low-budget "New Plays Uptown" productions? Another hipster-dad-versus-artist-son story, with embittered mom and a screwed-up celebrity bimbo as not-so-innocent bystanders, its substance is all family information, long familiar to audiences and uncertainly conveyed, with dad coming off as such a self-important flakehead that you wonder why son even bothers to attempt communication. Jackson Gay has provided an efficient production, of which I believed almost nothing except Daniel Eric Gold's pulsating angst as the son, and Leslie Lyles's sardonic detachment as his mother. And couldn't Gay at least have remembered that people don't know the layout of houses they've never been in?