Playwright: Theresa Rebeck. At: Haven Theatre Company at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets: 773-975-8150; www.theaterwit.org; $32. Runs through: April 13
There are three reasons for attending writers' workshops: 1 ) to hustle a lucrative contract/grant/professorship, 2 ) to pontificate endlessly about your ( superior ) artistic theories, 3 ) to get laid. There are three reasons for teaching writers' workshops: 1 ) to fund your own "research" in exotic foreign locales, 2 ) to pontificate endlessly about other people's ( inferior ) artistic theories, 3 ) to get laid. The four scribblers who meet weekly for mentorly advice from a ( once ) famous novelist do all of these things, little suspecting that its sole purpose is to reduce the clutter obstructing their pursuit of tangible goals.
Who are these Ivy League-educated, urban-dwelling tyros? Well, Douglas flaunts his extensive publishing connections, but writes to formula. Kate copies the narrative voices of classical authors, but balks at plots. Izzy cuddles up to whomever can boost her fem-fantasy erotica, and Martin refuses to show his peers a single precious word of manuscript. Leonard, their instructor, who boasts of vacations in devastated Third-World countries and denies his short-term memory loss, is no less flawed.
Playwright Theresa Rebeck has forged her career upon the lifestyles of Manhattan's Upper West Side, where Izzy still lives with her parents and Martin occupies one of the five empty bedrooms in the apartment furnished Kate by her largely absent family. Privilege doesn't prevent fledgling artists behaving any differently from their counterparts in other regions and eras: they squabble, they conspire, they gossip, they whine. They couple, and uncouple. They eat cheap junk food and drink expensive beer. After exhausting these activities, they come to realize—almost by accident—where their talents lie and finish by contentedly embarking on their respective roads to success.
On the roster of boring spectator sports, listening to writers talk ranks right alongside watching writers work, making even more commendable director Marti Lyons—no stranger to the subtleties of lit-chat ( cf. Jackalope Theater's The Peacock )—and her actors' microcosmic amplification of discoveries lurking beneath what appears on the surface to be mere persiflage. You don't need to have inhabited the world of professional wordsmiths to empathize, though insiders will recognize—perhaps regretfully—references to fashionable print creds ( e.g., The New Yorker ) and literary cloisters ( e.g., Yaddo ). Oh, and however readily we may dismiss Douglas' pompous invocation of "interiority and exteriority," whattaya wanna bet that the next day, we look for an opportunity to use those words?
