The title is baffling, but what’s clear about the Roundabout’s If There is I Haven't Found it Yetis the focus. It is water, and lots of it. Before the play even starts, rain pours steadily into a moat at the edge of the stage. Interestingly, rain itself never plays a part in the play, but the soggy theme is omnipresent, a symbolic threat of drowning both the planet and one dysfunctional family.
Written by Nick Payne, If There Is . . . at the Laura Pels Theater, is set in England, where an intense family drama is performed by a four-person ensemble including Hollywood actor, Jake Gyllenhaal in a starring role.
Overweight 15-year-old Anna (Annie Funke) is bullied by her classmates about both her weight and her mother, Fiona (Michelle Gomez), a teacher in the school. Anna, a sullen, solitary and vulnerable girl harboring low self-esteem, cannot rely on her parents for sympathy or attention. Fiona smothers her personal dissatisfaction in work. Anna’s father, George (Brían F. O'Byrne), is an obsessive environmentalist, absorbed in the ecological peril to the planet. He has little time for his family, and the three live isolated lives until suddenly, Uncle Terry (Jake Gyllenhaal), George’s ne-er do well younger brother, shows up to shake the family stagnation.
After drifting aimlessly for years mourning a lost love, Terry returns to reclaim his former girlfriend who, incidentally, never appears in the play. While not as intellectual as his brother George, Terry has an instinctive compassion and quickly realizes the despondency in this disruptive family. Both misfits, Terry and Anna develop a friendship that Payne nuances with sharp dialogue and a complexity that occasionally veers close to inappropriate eroticism.
Gyllenhaal’s American stage debut here is commendable, though his English accent is often hard to decipher. His defeated face and gawky arm movements evoke a comic-tragic character with a complicated appeal.
As Anna, Funke’s compelling mix of adolescent yearning, innocence and frustration interacts believably with the foul-mouthed Gyllenhaal’s earthy instincts.
Gomez’ portrayal of Fiona draws the snappy anger of a woman deeply resentful of her empty marriage. As her aloof husband, O’Byrne is maddening with George’s ecological preoccupation, but he later scores with a subtle, passionate defense of his beliefs. In this New York directing debut, Michael Longhurst steers these complex emotions with persuasive subtlety that shifts to intensity.
Scenic designer Beowulf Boritt’s watery set is strikingly theatrical. In the center of the stage is a pile of furniture for the actors to pick through, choose, and pull out what they need. When the prop is no longer necessary, it is flung into the pool where it bobs and floats, the water level rising until the actors are ankle-deep, sloshing their way toward the finale. All this flooding portends the perils of global warming,but the overblown theatricality often distracts from the emotional honesty of the drama.
