Theater Review—

‘Singing Forest’ Offers Some Serious Comedy Along With Social Commentary

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN — Some people walked out because they couldn’t handle the juxtaposition of tragic history and sidesplitting farce. A lot more people stood up at the end to give a well-deserved ovation to the actors who performed Craig Lucas’ magnificent play, Singing Forest, which opened its East Coast premiere at Long Wharf Theatre earlier this month.

The farce, set in New York City in 2000, revolves around a young billionaire recluse, Jules Ahmad, whose desire to be psychoanalyzed is thwarted by his refusal to be seen. He wants to know why his mother set fire to his father, why he has never been allowed to see his grandmother, and how he can find a normal life when people think of him only as the sixth richest man in the world.

He hires Gray, a struggling actor, to be his proxy, presenting Jules’ dreams and problems as his own. Because Jules is gay, he stipulates that the analyst must be gay as well.

What ensues is a comedy of errors, involving gay shrinks competing over boyfriends, Gray confessing his plan to steal Jules’ identity to an erotic advice hotline (operated by Jules’ grandmother with the help of a voice scrambler), a Starbucks patronized by most of the characters, and a classic tangle where everyone shows up at the grandmother’s apartment, making liberal use of four doors and a wardrobe in order to hide from one another.

But this is a very serious play. Modern psychoanalysis is being satirized because it is inadequate for dealing with the enormity of the problems haunting this family. As Loe Rieman, the grandmother observes, trying to use analysis to make amends for evil is like trying to comb your hair with an electron microscope.

Yet psychoanalysis, which is based on uncovering and confronting the emotional logjams that cripple the psyche, is also the connecting thread that links the two very different plots that comprise Singing Forest. The past that Loe carries with her is the golden age of 1930s Vienna, the cultural and artistic center of Europe that saw itself as the new Athens, where artists, writers, musicians and intellectuals mingled in comfortable drawing rooms and partied in bohemian nightclubs.

While young men wearing Nazi armbands stood ominously on the fringes, Loe’s family and friends gloried in the joys of philosophical argument and romantic excess.

Sigmund Freud himself was a frequent guest in the Reiman home, and when the young Loe suffered fainting spells, the courtly doctor was asked to take her on as a patient. After all, he had analyzed all the rest of the family.

Freud was also a realist. Aware that Hitler and the Nazis intended to annex Austria and extend fascist rule to all of Europe, he arranged for his own family, including servants, to leave for safety in England. And because Loe’s beloved brother, Walter, was homosexual, he warned that the Reimans should consider emigrating as well.

But Loe’s father was reluctant to jeopardize the family’s considerable fortune, which would have been the price of escape. It was the old story: he imagined that “civilized” Austria would always be safe for decent people, so long as they did not draw attention to themselves.

Loe survived, but her father, Walter, and Walter’s lover, Simon, disappeared. At the end of the war, embittered, tormented, and pregnant with twins, Loe emigrated to America. Drawing on her personal relationship with Freud she achieved some success as a lay analyst, but her own family was emotionally paralyzed by the burdens of her past. The twins, Oliver and Bertha, grew up to be estranged from her as well as from each other, and seemingly incapable of healthy relationships with anyone.

Guided by the impulses of Loe’s consciousness, and the  trajectory of her memories, the play moves back and forth in time, using the device of having most of the cast handle dual roles: the characters in the modern farce and the members of her Viennese circle are played by the same actors. Using altered diction and distinctly different body language, they morph before your eyes into people from another age and culture.

When the farce reaches its denouement, the two stories mesh together, as Loe finally reveals her own secrets and explanations of what happened, and why she behaved as she did. It will not be psychoanalysis, but the risk of trusting her family that can offer the possibility of freeing her of guilt and anger, and bringing all of them some measure of self-acceptance.

The whole work is beautifully acted, led by Robin Bartlett in the very demanding role of Loe, but supported by the rest of the cast as well, particularly the eight people who play the double roles.

This blend of the personal and the historical, the tragic and the comic, brings to mind the work of Tony Kushner. The themes in it made me think of Angels in America and A Bright Light Called Day. But while the comparison is a valid one, Lucas is a gifted playwright in his own right

His Singing Forest is a powerful, gripping creative work, representing the absolute best of what Long Wharf has to offer.

(Performances continue until February 6. Call 203-787-4282 for ticket and curtain information, as well as special program details.)