You wouldn’t be the first to wonder what the hell The
Realistic Joneses really means to be about.
To
make some advance sense of that, before seeing the show—and you
should—basically all you need to know about the play is that,
in it, a younger couple named Jones has moved in next door to a middle-aged
couple named Jones. The latter couple are having their problems: Bob (Tracy
Letts) has an illness which is wreaking small but progressive havoc on his
mental stability; and his wife Jennifer (Toni Collette) is
digging deeper for the reserves of patience it takes to preserve stability at
home. The younger couple are a little eccentric: Pony (Marissa Tomei) is
ditzy, John (Michael C. Hall) is abstracted, with a penchant
for non-sequitur philosophy. And that’s it.
Nothing
much happens in the play save for a series of mix-and-match encounters, leading
to no real consequence save a certain growing comfort zone between the two
couples.
Why
does it work so well anyway? Four reasons, I think.
(1)
Playwright Will Eno has himself stated that for him an important
component of the theatrical experience is providing enough ambiguity for the
audience to bring their own perspective and interpretation to the party; even
he (he claims) doesn’t have all the answers, and those spaces are as much for
him as the viewer.
(2)
He has a clear imprimatur. While one might say he’s in the tradition of Pinter and that ik, he is at the same time
nothing like Pinter and that ilk: We know who the characters are to each other (none of
that Is he really her husband? stuff), they don’t say things later that invalidate
things they said earlier; they progress honestly, they're fully dimensional, he allows us to warm to and care about theem, and doesn’t conflate narrative ambiguity with emotional distance.
(3)
He writes funny. The Realistic Joneses, somehow, in its bizarre,
understated, ambiguous way, is terribly funny.
(4)
It has that cast, directed by Sam Gold, and
they’re perfectly keyed into the tone. They’re all on exactly the same wavelength
and just have the mojo.
Sometimes,
when the what is elusive, a few good answers to why fill in.
Plus: right people, right room, right material equals lightning. It can be as
simple as that.