Date: Fri 23-Jan-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: DONNAM

Quick Words:

Country-Club-Long-Wharf-Stern

Full Text:

(rev "The Country Club" @Long Wharf)

The Best & Worst Of An Uncaring World

(with cut)

By Julie Stern

NEW HAVEN -- It sometimes happens that a play, while not necessarily a great

work, leaves audiences with enough to think about that the result is a highly

enjoyable experience. In short, the whole adds up to more than the sum of the

parts, or to be more exact, the ten parties which punctuate a year in Douglas

Carter Beane's The Country Club .

Set in the lounge reserved for the junior members of the Wyomissing Country

Club, with its shabby but comfortable leather couches surrounded by dusty

trophies and well-worn sport and game equipment, the play uses artful changes

of holiday decorations to indicate the passage of time in the lives of Pooker,

Soos, Froggy, Bri, Hutch and Zip, the sextet of twenty-somethings coping with

an attack of existential angst. Country Club continues at Long Wharf Theatre

until February 1.

The time is the present; the club, which is the social center of the

prosperous Pennsylvania suburb, is still "restricted" -- off limits of Jews,

blacks, and other ethnics. The characters are old-line Wasps -- beautiful

people devoted to recreational activity, who look like a Ralph Lauren Polo

magazine spread come to life.

Soos (Prepspeak for Susan), newly returned from the West Coast and a failed

marriage, is considering the prospect of rekindling a relationship with her

old flame, Zipper. He is amenable but things get complicated when Zipper's

boozy best friend Hutch meets and marries Chloe, a beautiful north

Philadelphia Italian with the wrong clothes, the wrong hair, the wrong accent,

the wrong relatives and the wrong religion. Chloe is nevertheless lured by the

prospect of breaching the bastions of the wealthy. In other words, she is a

"climber."

Pheremones flow: Zip and Chloe have a torrid affair, making everyone

uncomfortable and causing them to question the meaning and purpose of their

lives. This is done with sharp satirical observation, much humor and clever

dialogue, along with some rather unnecessary but harmless nudity. The play is

very entertaining, but is there any substance?

About 150 years ago a young French count visited the US to observe our social

and political behavior. In his Democracy in America , deToqueville noted that

because America, as a "classless" society, has no aristocracy (for whom

inherited privilege and ownership of the land are linked with a code of honor,

duty and service), a new leadership class had to emerge, shaped by merit,

intelligence and ambition, to take on the responsibility of power.

Unfortunately, whereas the claims of traditional aristocrats (like

deToqueville himself) are confirmed by their family names and blue blood, in

this country it is much less clear who the ruling class is, or what, beyond

having made a lot of money, justifies their sense of entitlement. Humorists

from Mark Twain to Groucho Marx have had fun satirizing the pretensions of

snobs who imagined themselves to be "of the best society."

What gives The Country Club poignancy is the golden couple, Soos and Zipper,

who represent the best of their kind. Unlike the others, they are smart, and

they have the ability to make each other laugh. A sense of humor is a sign of

intelligence, but much of it is gallows humor.

In this evolving era which is rapidly marginalizing people like them, Soos and

Zipper have sufficient self-awareness to see the emptiness of the world to

which they have been bred, but lack the vision or the will to adapt to the new

age.

As played by Marianne Hagan and Kurt Deutsch, Soos and Zipper are charming and

attractive, and so we care about them, with the mix of pity and exasperation

inspired by characters in a Chekhov play, listening to the distant axes taking

down the cherry trees.

In contrast, Amy Sedaris as the frantically convivial Froggy, and Peter Benson

as her stuffy husband Bri, make us feel their characters more than deserve

comeuppance. Alan Tudyk is right out of the Deke house as Hutch, and Amanda

Peet invests Chloe Maria Donna DeGlatalia with exactly the pizzazz she needs

to sweep those boys off their preppie feet.

(For tickets or curtain information, call 787-4282.)