‘Beyond Therapy’

The East Brunswick Community players take on absurdist playwright Christopher Durang.

By: Stuart Duncan

Left to right: Rick Holloway, Wayne Harris and Tracey Fama star in the Playhouse 22 production of Beyond Therapy.

   Playwright Christopher Durang remains a favorite of college and community theater groups. The latest effort is a production of a 20-year-old bauble named Beyond Therapy, which some may remember as a movie with Julie Hagerty and Jeff Goldblum (1987). It also introduced Sigourney Weaver to off-Broadway in 1981.
   The production is at Playhouse 22, the home of the East Brunswick Community Players, and is in the hands of director Mark Kalet and a company of strong actors. Two of those are among the busiest in the area: Wayne Harris and Tracey Fama. The pair, with considerable help from Douglas Brautigan, Lynn Springer, Rick Holloway and Richard Sibello, struggle to find depth in the playwright’s jigsaw plot (it’s always a bit of a tussle with Durang) and thereby bring humanity to cardboard characters.
   The plot isn’t that important, but people expect it: Bruce (first name only here) has written one of those lovelorn ads seeking a mate. Not a roommate, you understand. He already has Bob. This time, he thinks he will try a girl. Prudence answers, but the two get along rather badly and she quickly leaves.
   Now both seek help from their respective therapists. She has one who makes every third sentence a proposition for her body. He has one who cuddles a Snoopy stuffed dog and can’t seem to remember the proper words for many objects. (Patients become porpoises, for example.) Before long, everyone — Bruce, Prudence, Bob, both therapists and the waiter who turns out to be a real fit for this melange — meet in a local restaurant so the mayhem can continue.
   Playwright Durang’s play hasn’t aged well — it seemed more powerful 20 years ago, before all the modern nods on stage to homosexual interests and all the late-night comic thrusts about therapists. Moreover, the production itself seems to be having trouble deciding whether it is a comedy, farce or sitcom. It wanders between the three, never lighting for long. Meanwhile, Mr. Harris and Ms. Fama work like fury to inject small touches of real humanity into dialogue that virtually defies it.
   More fun are the printed observations that are projected on the back wall during the frequent scene shifts (there are nine scenes in all). My favorites: "The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults." — Peter de Vries. Or this, from an anonymous source: "A Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother."
   That’s funnier and more revealing than anything Durang wrote.
Beyond Therapy plays at Playhouse 22, 210 Dunhams Corner Road, East Brunswick, through Aug. 10. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun. 3 p.m. Tickets cost $16; seniors/students $12. For information, call (732) 254-3939. On the Web: www.playhouse22.org