The melancholy refrain "what if?" takes an interesting turn in Long Wharf Theatre's production of "Down the Garden Paths."
Premiering in a dual-run partnership with New Jersey's George Street Playhouse, this pensive comedy is the second play by Anne Meara, of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara. Like her first, "After-Play," this is directed by David Saint. George Street, where Saint is artistic director, debuted it in November.
Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' book "The Garden of Forking Paths," and by the notion of divergent realities, "Down the Garden Paths" follows the Garden family through vignettes reflecting what would have happened if their lives had taken different turns earlier.
Interestingly, this production reflects many of the playwright's and the actors' own choices and destinies. It features Meara's and Jerry Stiller's daughter Amy Stiller in two roles, as well as their friends, Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach, and their daughter, actress Roberta Wallach. Though not purely autobiographical, Jackson's and Wallach's characters are painted with colorful Stiller and Meara brushstrokes, and there are many allusions to the perils and annoyances of family life on the comedy circuit.
The vignettes are framed by a banquet for the Herschel Strange Award 2000, which features a video biography of Strange that stars Jerry Stiller. Strange was a German scientist, professor and author whose radical theories ostracized him. Winning the Strange award is Arthur Garden (John Procaccino), for a book that explores the possibility of simultaneously unfolding alternative realities or, as Jackson's character Stella Dempsey Garden aptly puts it, "woulda, shoulda, coulda."
What happens at Arthur Garden's home following the banquet is the play's crux, and as we watch the banquet and after-banquet party unfold over and over, Garden's alternative reality theory is illustrated. It's not a novel notion; who hasn't wondered where a different decision would have led in our lives? But Meara provides dramatic contrasts of life, death and disease that underscore the theory boldly.
The first scene in this intermission-less play is the most problematic, in part because it lacks the intrigue of comparison to the alternate realities that haven't yet been introduced. But it's also packed with characters whose relationships to each other aren't immediately clear and thus busy the viewer's mind with trying to keep a mental scorecard of couples and siblings and children and how and whether they relate to each other. And it's full of all these mini-expository revelations that burst forth competitively, to the detriment of chemistry and connection. Many of these revelations are crucial, as they foreshadow what-ifs in the following scenes. But when peppered with sitcom-style one-liners–the parent characters are a comedy team–this is one stew with too many ingredients.
It simmers down in the second unfolding, which features fewer characters. And the laughs are tripped up by accusation, guilt and resentment, creating a much more compelling drama. Here, the author's wife, Liz (Ann McDonough), has far more depth , to a large extent due to her interplay with the child she had pined for through two miscarriages referred to in the previous post-banquet familial incarnation. The child is 18-year-old Jodie (Stiller), a messed-up, persnickety and arrogant recovering drug addict, who whips her mother with merciless, accusatory snarls. ("Woulda, coulda, shoulda thought twice before wishing for a monster like this," we can feel the mother thinking.)
A past family tragedy, referred to as narrowly averted in the first scenario, pierces this one and those that follow, with different turns of fate leaving varying trails of blame and guilt and resentment behind them. Through the illumination of these trails, the core characters gain more depth, and their connections are far stronger.
Although this family's paths are interesting, the most intriguing plot turns for most viewers will doubtlessly by the ones that unfold in their own minds afterward. And that's a legacy greater than any Strange Award this play may garner.