Grand Horizons at Alley Rep

Or: Making a Splash

Bill (Craig Kreiser) and Nancy (Patti O’Hara) have been married for fifty years, a long slow decent through a marriage that has closed over them like the depths of the sea. Until Nancy asks, over their umpteenth painfully silent dinners for a divorce. Now their children, Brian (Ryan Singh) and Ben (Jessie Bastian) along with Ben’s wife Jess (Annie Bulow) descend upon their retirement village condominium looking for a quick fix to this life altering decision. Little do they know that they are calling up sectors of the past that might destroy all of their carefully curated, utterly lonely lives, or perhaps bring them to life.

Bess Wohl tumbles together hilarious sit-com japes with blindingly clear reflections of life and love and connections. Nancy and her family stir up the untapped potential of their lives, the deep sense of loneliness they have in each other’s company, in a manner that sets flights of laughs above the audience and gasps of understanding and personal remorse. It’s a script that masterfully juggles jokes and revelations for different audiences, for the general fear of finding your life yoked to the wrong person, to the endless struggle of trying to give two many kids lead parts in The Crucible.

Special attention must be paid, in this production by Alley Rep, to the walk ins, the one scene wonders Tommy (Spencer Kohler) a hookup Brian brings home at the most inopportune time and Carla (Alice Thompson) a fellow resident and one of Bill’s stand-up colleagues with whom he may or may not have become “close.” Thompson’s effusive stage presence lights up the set with grace and hilarity, while Kohler’s devil may care seduction plays perfectly off of Singh’s physical comedy of discomfort of distance and desire.

Kreiser’s understated gruff fits Bill like a glove: his quest for comedy, his sideways cracks, his life of quiet exasperation is the rock which Nancy’s waves surges around. O’Hara is the pillar around which the play revolves, as she finds her own definition as a person with grace and spirit. It’s a joy to watch O’Hara, with wild abandon, awaken her characters joy and verve from a life of silence, and make her mark in the world.