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American Sonis a dreadful play and its not alone.
Some of these plays are made in bad faith; many arent.
These plays bank on their audiences inability to disentangle content and form.
Barkeep, add it to the tab.
We are surfeited with these plays.
It also has a contrived, TV-ish script peopled by one-note characters and peppered with amateurish flourishes.
They neither take joy in the possibilities of their own form nor respect its demands.
Her son Jamal took the car the night before and hasnt come home.
Hes not answering her texts or calls.
Kendra is black and Scott is white.
And Scotts staunch cluelessness reads in much the same way.
Hes a character whose personality traits comfortably overlap with narrative conveniences, allowing for the loudest arguments.
The supporting players, meanwhile, are given bald cliches to work with.
He also uses this conversation to shoehorn in a maudlin portrait of her son.
Jamals sign is Taurus.
Hes bashful and looks away when he smiles.
He plays the guitar … And hes afraid of clowns …
This is cheap, manipulative writing, and Demos-Brown does it again and again.
Did you and I ever agree on anything?
Bourbon Manhattans at dusk out on the patio, she replies, Thelonious Monk … Thai food …
The U … Cormac McCarthy … sex.
And presumably pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.
Why did you walk up to me?
So we get a weepy, writerly amble down memory lane right before learning Jamals fate.
Ambiguity is sacrificed to ham-fistedness as the curtain falls, and were left with with what?
It does not it must not.
It would be that they stop pretending they are doing something relevant, because they are not.
You cant do something relevant unless you do it from your heart.
And audiences … would stop pretending they are doing something relevant by going to the theater …
There would not be writers writing plays by formula.
Nor would artistic directors choose plays by formula.
This pretending gives but a shallow satisfaction and ultimately creates a distaste for theater.
If theater is to be successful it must be loved liked one loves an animal that one wonders at.
Not like one loves a formula.
Of course the formula for the Righteous American Issue Play has been around for much longer than two years.
Sincerity does not save us from bad art, and bad art is never of use.
American Sonis at the Booth Theatre.
