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All in The Family of Mann

BY ROBERT DAVID SULLIVAN

THE FAMILY OF MANN
BY THERESA REBECK. DIRECTED BY NORA HUSSEY. SET DESIGN BY KEN LOEWIT. SOUND BY ELIZABETH HEDSTROM. LIGHTING BY MARC OLIVERE. COSTUMES BY KATHERINE HALL. WITH STEPHEN COOPER, DERRY WOODHOUSE, ALICIA KAHN, SARA-ANN SEMEDO, DEREK NELSON, BONNIE LEE WHANG, AND DOUGLAS RAINEY. AT BOSTON PLAYWRIGHTS’ THEATRE, THURSDAY THROUGH SATURDAY THROUGH FEBRUARY 10.

We’re better off not knowing how certain things are made — laws, sausages, and, if Theresa Rebeck’s The Family of Mann is to be believed, television sit-coms. “I thought it was going to be The Dick Van Dyke Show,” confesses a young woman who’s been hired to pound out scripts for a banal TV series. But instead of clever quips and camaraderie in the writers’ room, she finds an obsession with proctological jokes and an atmosphere of paranoia. Workdays stretch around the clock, as the mutually suspicious writers go through draft after draft, trying to satisfy a narcissistic producer and a cast of prima donnas. There may be comedy tomorrow, but there’s no end of tragedy tonight.

The sit-com called The Family of Mann may be awful, but the play in which it’s enclosed has a few effective moments, at least in the hands of director Nora Hussey. (She’s also the director of Wellesley Summer Theatre, which is co-producing the New England premiere of Mann with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.) Although the play tries to make some points about the monstrous behavior hidden beneath the glitter of Hollywood, it works best if you ignore all the stuff about LA and concentrate on the universal rules of office politics.

Like the central character in The Family of Mann, playwright Rebeck was an academic who somehow found herself in the male-dominated world of television writing. In recent years, she has contributed to hard-edged dramas like NYPD Blue, but Mann was first staged in 1994, which would have been shortly after she worked on the wholesome comedy Brooklyn Bridge. The similarities between that sit-com and the fake Mann may have resonated six years ago, but the play feels dated now, with programs like Growing Pains virtually extinct and TV comedy better represented by Sex and the City. The use of profanity by the Mann writers, for example, comes off as a parody of David Mamet rather than as an ironic contrast to the once-squeaky-clean language of TV characters.

Any satire in The Family of Mann is further complicated by the confusing status of the sit-com within. Neither a hit nor an outright flop, it doesn’t say much about popular taste in America. There are references to the show’s high standing among critics and within the television industry, but as the brief scenes from the sit-com make clear, it’s actually terrible, and there’s no obvious point to this discrepancy. We’re not surprised to find a sausage factory behind a bland show like The Family of Mann; it might have been more interesting had Rebeck set her play behind the scenes of a “quality” program like NYPD Blue. Is the process just as cynical and ego-driven there?

For a while, such questions are more interesting than the play itself, but Hussey’s production picks up speed about two-thirds of the way through. By then, Mann has focused on the clash between staff writer Belinda (Alicia Kahn), who’s trying to remain a “storyteller” rather than a hack, and producer Ed (Stephen Cooper), who pays lip service to the idea of quality but is actually more concerned with keeping total control over what he calls “my show.” Cooper is particularly good at conveying what Ed may think is genuine warmth (he probably had to fool himself before dispensing the stuff to employees), a quality that’s replaced by cold detachment when things don’t go his way. As the overqualified writer with big ideas (since we’re in the realm of sit-coms, think of Diane Chambers on Cheers), Kahn’s Belinda is not an entirely sympathetic character, and that helps keep the play from tipping over to one side. Among the rest of the cast, Derek Nelson is appealing but suitably enigmatic as Belinda’s boyfriend and fellow Mann writer. Derry Woodhouse is another standout, as an assistant producer who vacillates between easygoing joviality and complete emotional meltdowns. His panic in the wake of Belinda’s failure to observe office protocol after an argument with Ed helps move Mann from weak satire to more grounded drama.

Most cast members also play actors on the sit-com, a gimmick that never really goes anywhere. In this production, the fake-kitchen set for the ersatz sit-com, which takes up half the stage, distracts from the writers’ room, where most of the real action takes place. Maybe this is intentional, but the reality-versus-fantasy thread of the play gets frayed pretty quickly. Similarly, the use of “real” television themesongs between scenes merely tempts us to play Name That Tune in our heads instead of paying attention to what’s on stage. The Family of Mann has some emotional resonance, but, like so many current television programs, it’s often too busy for its own good.

We’re better off not knowing how certain things are made — laws, sausages, and, if Theresa Rebeck’s The Family of Mann is to be believed, television sit-coms. “I thought it was going to be The Dick Van Dyke Show,” confesses a young woman who’s been hired to pound out scripts for a banal TV series. But instead of clever quips and camaraderie in the writers’ room, she finds an obsession with proctological jokes and an atmosphere of paranoia. Workdays stretch around the clock, as the mutually suspicious writers go through draft after draft, trying to satisfy a narcissistic producer and a cast of prima donnas. There may be comedy tomorrow, but there’s no end of tragedy tonight.

The sit-com called The Family of Mann may be awful, but the play in which it’s enclosed has a few effective moments, at least in the hands of director Nora Hussey. (She’s also the director of Wellesley Summer Theatre, which is co-producing the New England premiere of Mann with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.) Although the play tries to make some points about the monstrous behavior hidden beneath the glitter of Hollywood, it works best if you ignore all the stuff about LA and concentrate on the universal rules of office politics.

Like the central character in The Family of Mann, playwright Rebeck was an academic who somehow found herself in the male-dominated world of television writing. In recent years, she has contributed to hard-edged dramas like NYPD Blue, but Mann was first staged in 1994, which would have been shortly after she worked on the wholesome comedy Brooklyn Bridge. The similarities between that sit-com and the fake Mann may have resonated six years ago, but the play feels dated now, with programs like Growing Pains virtually extinct and TV comedy better represented by Sex and the City. The use of profanity by the Mann writers, for example, comes off as a parody of David Mamet rather than as an ironic contrast to the once-squeaky-clean language of TV characters.

Any satire in The Family of Mann is further complicated by the confusing status of the sit-com within. Neither a hit nor an outright flop, it doesn’t say much about popular taste in America. There are references to the show’s high standing among critics and within the television industry, but as the brief scenes from the sit-com make clear, it’s actually terrible, and there’s no obvious point to this discrepancy. We’re not surprised to find a sausage factory behind a bland show like The Family of Mann; it might have been more interesting had Rebeck set her play behind the scenes of a “quality” program like NYPD Blue. Is the process just as cynical and ego-driven there?

For a while, such questions are more interesting than the play itself, but Hussey’s production picks up speed about two-thirds of the way through. By then, Mann has focused on the clash between staff writer Belinda (Alicia Kahn), who’s trying to remain a “storyteller” rather than a hack, and producer Ed (Stephen Cooper), who pays lip service to the idea of quality but is actually more concerned with keeping total control over what he calls “my show.” Cooper is particularly good at conveying what Ed may think is genuine warmth (he probably had to fool himself before dispensing the stuff to employees), a quality that’s replaced by cold detachment when things don’t go his way. As the overqualified writer with big ideas (since we’re in the realm of sit-coms, think of Diane Chambers on Cheers), Kahn’s Belinda is not an entirely sympathetic character, and that helps keep the play from tipping over to one side. Among the rest of the cast, Derek Nelson is appealing but suitably enigmatic as Belinda’s boyfriend and fellow Mann writer. Derry Woodhouse is another standout, as an assistant producer who vacillates between easygoing joviality and complete emotional meltdowns. His panic in the wake of Belinda’s failure to observe office protocol after an argument with Ed helps move Mann from weak satire to more grounded drama.

Most cast members also play actors on the sit-com, a gimmick that never really goes anywhere. In this production, the fake-kitchen set for the ersatz sit-com, which takes up half the stage, distracts from the writers’ room, where most of the real action takes place. Maybe this is intentional, but the reality-versus-fantasy thread of the play gets frayed pretty quickly. Similarly, the use of “real” television themesongs between scenes merely tempts us to play Name That Tune in our heads instead of paying attention to what’s on stage. The Family of Mann has some emotional resonance, but, like so many current television programs, it’s often too busy for its own good.

 

 
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