Junk Revels in Nihilism

Junk, now playing at the Lincoln Center, is a play full of fantastic acting, interesting staging and intelligent writing. Unfortunately, it is also a depressing call back to the worst of the 1980’s that holds up a fun house mirror to today’s issues, making that horrible time look quaint by comparison. It is not a pleasant evening. Your tolerance for Junk will depend on how much you can appreciate great actors being horrible people.

The story is complex, but not complicated. At its essence, Junk tells the tale of a corporate raider, his lawyer, and the acquiring firm’s CEO and their struggle to acquire a steel conglomerate listed on the Dow Jones. These three are played excellently by Steven Psaquale, Matthew Saldivar and Matthew Rauch, respectively. Steven Pasquale is Robert Merkin, the new Time Magazine Cover Boy of junk bonds and leveraged debt. For Robert Merkin, takeovers are both personal and professional. As a Jewish man, he witnessed his father’s rejection by the (WASP) Wall Street power brokers. Today, his drive and desire to rip apart that world is equal parts revenge, greed and Napoleon complex.

Hunter and Prey - Steven Psaquale and Rick Holmes in Junk (Henry Stram- upstage right)

Rick Holmes is Thomas Everton Jr., CEO of Everton Steel, the takeover target. He is a nice guy CEO, although he may be cooking the books a little to save steel jobs in his hometown. His two lawyers are a Jewish man and an African American Woman (Henry Stram and Ito Aghayere) who try to explain the new paradigm of debt financing and the threat to his company. Everton is too rigid, too sentimental and a little too bigoted to make it in this new cut-throat world.

The final leg of the triangle of players is a Chinese American journalist (Teresa Avia Lim) and rich old white power player Leo Tressler (Michael Siberry - who is wonderfully morally superior). These characters provide the extensive exposition and creepy sexual politics.

There are a lot of shades of grey in the morality of this show, but not in the manner you’re used to seeing. Normally shades of grey define the mental conflict of the good vs. the bad guys. Here, everyone is a greedy S.O.B., there are no good guys. The grey here is displayed as some of the characters are, occasionally, less morally bankrupt than others.  America, as defined by Junk, is a fight between greedy upstarts with grudges to bear - who delight in humiliating their enemies, versus greedy white male racists. Women fare poorly, each one in Junk sells out her principals for money or power, often both. Men fare worse, only because there are more of them who provide a greater variety of repulsive moral traits.

Playwright Ayad Akhtar and director Doug Hughes do a fantastic job of explaining the way takeovers are financed, the impacts of “creative destruction” and showing that everyone in America is complicit. Junk might have provided an apt warning against smugness if Hillary Clinton had won the election. In the current political environment, however, it just feels like gratuitous piling on.  The American Dream is dead, we get it.

Junk | Playwright: Ayad Akhtar | Director: Doug Hughes | Cast: Steven Pasquale, Teresa Avia Lim, Matthew Rauch, Matthew Saldivar, Rick Homes, Henry Stram, Ito Aghayere, Michael Siberry, Joey Slotnick | Lincoln Center Website for Junk

Transcending Marriage Has Its Own Risk and Rewards

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How To Transcend A Happy Marriage, opening at the Lincoln Center’s Mitzie Newhouse Theater, is an untidy show. Beautifully acted and well signposted in the first act, the second act is a bit of a mess.

It starts with a friendly pair of married couples, Paul & George – played by Omar Metwally and Marisa Tomei and Michael & Jane – played by Brian Hutchinson and Robin Weigert. The ladies (George is a woman) have been friends since High School and are still close. Both have children now, Paul and George three younger children, Michael and Jane one teenage girl. They get together occasionally for dinner, drinks and the odd game of scrabble.

One such night, Jenna mentions a temp at work, Pip, who is a Bohemian in a polymorous situation, living with 2 male partners. She is an free spirit who will only eat meat she has killed, wears want she wants and lives a wild life. Some jokes, questions and mild titillation arise about Pip and her lifestyle. And so then the couples decide to invite Pip and her men for New Year’s Eve.

Omar Metwally, Marisa Tomei, Lena Hall, Austin Smith, David McElwee

Later, before George leaves for the party, Marisa Tomei addresses the audience directly, letting us know things take a bad turn. This admission plants a layer of expectation and dread before New Year’s Eve begins.

At the party, enter Lena Hall as the fascinating and sexual Pip, trailing her two male partners (David McElwee and Austin Smith) – smart, sensual and opinionated in their own right. The seven spend New Year’s Eve drinking, flirting, talking and eating hash brownies. Yeah, you know where this is going. Pip is a magnetic figure; eyes follow Ms. Hall no matter what she does. Her sexy rendition of “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round The Mountain” is an oddly erotic tour de force.

Varying amounts of justification, guilt, acceptance and self-reproach, follow the sexual shenanigans. The discussions are, in varying amounts: interesting, redundant and self-indulgent. It is as if we, as a society, have sexually and emotionally regressed since the 1960s (or decades earlier if you happened to see Unfaithfully Yours at The Mint).

How To Transcend a Happy Marriage is, oddly enough, bound by a set of societal limitations that seems slightly archaic to me. The characters appear (to themselves) to be breaking beyond norms, but their actions as normative as possible in the situation. I would have expected no different conclusion had this been written during the Eisenhower Administration.

How To Transcend... is beautifully acted, particularly by Marisa Tomei and Lena Hall. But ultimately it leaves a frustrating taste in your mouth, a self-congratulatory Greenwich Connecticut flavor.

How To Transcend a Happy Marriage | Playwright: Sarah Ruhl | Director: Rebecca Taichman | Cast: Lena Hall, Brian Hutchison, David McElwee, Omar Metwally, Naian Gonzales Norvind, Austin Smith, Marisa Tomei, Robin Weigert