The PushOver Feels Off From The Start

Something about the whole evening was off.

The Chain theatre is a small Off Broadway space on 36 th street in a little building where other theatres and rehearsal spaces have come and gone over the years and when I finally approached the address it hit me, I once had a play produced in this building.

I asked myself, why is the world premiere of a new Shanley play in this tiny theatre? The man has a Tony, a Pulitzer for Doubt, which he adapted and directed for the screen as well, and he has an Oscar! Doubt received a Broadway revival in the past few years, and his classic Danny and the Deep Blue Sea recently received a revival at the Lucielle Lortel. It’s a tough business and Shanley, while in the pantheon to be certain, is not guaranteed a Broadway opening for everything he writes okay, but this?

What are they hiding, I asked myself, and I soon found out. The play is described in the press release as “three bad-ass women who collide and collude at a spa in New Mexico and a bare-bones Asian restaurant in Queens. Dangerous and hungry, their weapons and their passions bleed into each other. They speak the language of the outcast, rough and sexual, and fight to survive, and to love.”

This all makes as much sense as that paragraph did. The three “bad ass women” mentioned above are first and foremost, Rebecca De Mornay who of course rose to infamy playing the hooker in the film Risky Business. We are asked to believe that she is a dangerous self-made hard ass who the other two characters are irresistibly drawn to. However, De Mornay’s Evelyn simply lounges around telling us how dangerous she is giving the performance of a high school actor who has been told their character is “edgy.” Coming on gangbusters from some other play, maybe in another building is Christina Toth as Soochi, the ex-lover and business partner of Pearl who we’ll get to in a second. Soochi is a volatile, full-blown nutter who apparently is also an unscrupulous accountant who goes to work stealing for Evelyn, even though Evelyn is still in love with Pearl.

Hope for the play returns when the scene changes to the restaurant of Pearl played by the magnetic Di Zhu. Her Pearl at least seems like someone you might recognize from life. I will spare you the rest of the plot or the contrivances of the love triangle between these three people who have zero chemistry and who are all comfortable with casual violence and stolen money. However, as the situation on stage grew more intense and absurd… something hit me.

This entire cast needs to go home and watch Moonstruck. In case you don’t know Moonstruck is Shanley’s Oscar winning screenplay for the film which won several other Oscars that year; the same year as The Untouchables, Wall Street and The Last Emperor. (That’s when the movies was The Movies, man.)

That is the problem, for that is the tone Shanley must have been going for and what is missing. Ridiculous scenarios and over the top dialogue that makes sense coming from these people who feel too much and live in a world of their own passions.

I’m talking about that iconic scene where Nicholas Cage tells Cher he is in love with her and she slaps him, not once but twice and yells, “Snap out of it!”

Or when Olympia Dukakis who is aware of the affair her husband is having, tells him in front of everyone at the breakfast table. “I want you to stop seeing her.” And he stands, slams his hand on the table and sits back down again without every saying a word. That’s writing. And one of the greatest lines in American cinema; “You got a love bite on your neck. Your life’s going down the toilet!”

This is the world of Shanley, where the volume goes to eleven and therein lies a sweet spot between not playing it straight and not quite playing the comedy either.

The script has been taking a lot of hits from critics, but once I slapped on my Moonstruck filter I could almost see the play Shanley had written. Passionate, insane, and nonsensical. I wish the cast and the director had done the same. It should also be mentioned here that the play was just extended through May 2, so somebody is digging it.

See you at the movies.