Anyone who has sat through a nightmarish dinner party can relate to the circumstances portrayed in Life X 3by noted playwright Yasmina Reza. In this case, the dinner party guests are not even old friends but an arrogant boss and his wife (Hubert and Inez). Worse, they arrive on the wrong night, causing confusion and embarrassment to the hosts, Henry and Sonia.
As the play opens, Sonia and Henry are relaxing in their apartment. Sonia is already dressed in a bathrobe. She and Henry are struggling to get their petulant six-year-old son to sleep (as voiced by Mark Bucher). The couple wavers between firmness and futility. One wants to give the boy a cookie, while the other argues that it’s not a good idea because he just brushed his teeth, etc. They are both emotionally worn out – then the doorbell rings. Panic ensues.
Reza is best-known for her plays Art (1998 Tony Award) and God of Carnage (2009 Tony Award). The star-studded cast of Carnage included James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis.
One of the first problems with Life X 3 is that it comes with a primer. The audience needs to know that the same vignette – involving the same four characters – is repeated three times. Each scene borrows facts, ideas and dialogue from the previous one. Each scene is subsequently shorter, since it incorporates the audience’s “knowledge” gained from the previous scene. The vignettes expose how slight changes – such as a line by one actor in the first vignette is uttered by a different character in the second vignette – can alter the play’s circumstances. Boulevard artistic director Mark Bucher explains all this before the show starts.
Life is an interesting dramatic exercise, but it lacks the elements of a good play. It doesn’t help that the acting styles are all over the map. As Inez, Rachel Lewandowski’s stylized acting is in stark contrast to that of Sonia (Jamieson Hawkins), who adopts a far more naturalistic style. Hawkins gives little indication of what she is thinking, especially when she is buttering up Hubert, Henry’s boss. Is she really physically attracted to his power, or is she trying to save her husband’s job?
The weakest parts of the script deal with astrophysics, the field in which Hubert and Henry both work. Hubert, far more effective in playing office politics than Henry, works this skill to his advantage. As played by Siddhartha Valicharla, Hubert is seen as a bad guy who has let success go to his head. Overall, Joe Drilling fails to impress as Henry. He seems lost and uncertain. Henry is clearly out of his league in terms of his wife’s superior intelligence. He can’t compete with Hubert, either. So it’s no surprise that he is drawn to the companionship of Inez, Hubert’s wife.
Of all the characters, Inez (Rachel Lewandowski) seems to be the most realistic. One can easily imagine her fretting over a run in her stocking that she discovers minutes before meeting her hosts. What will they think?, she muses.
With anxiety running high, the guests and hosts practically bolt for the bottles of wine. The guests dine on whatever crackers and cookies the hosts have on hand. Sonia, the hostess, laughs nervously and makes repeated apologies for the “dinner.” Henry gets his courage up (after a few drinks) to tell Hubert what he really thinks about working at the office. When, in the final scene, Henry finally tells the arrogant Hubert to “F--- off!” the audience emits an almost audible sigh of relief. Director Mark Bucher skillfully leads the audience toward this payoff. One wishes there were more such “magic moments” to make this piece of theater truly satisfying.
Yasmina Reza
