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In a monologue at the beginning of “Any Given Monday,” prolific local playwright Bruce Graham’s latest, the main character’s daughter, Sarah (Geneviève Perrier), an undergraduate majoring in philosophy at an unnamed university, asks the audience, “Why am I here with you, telling you this?” I don’t know, and I don’t think Graham knows, either.
The play concerns Lenny (Bruce Graham), a halcyon middle-school teacher, whose wife has left him four days prior for a rich, Main Line-type who builds Wal-Marts. When Lenny’s friend, Mickey (Pete Pryor), a Regular Joe SEPTA worker, comes to his door to watch Monday Night Football, the play takes an unexpected turn when he reveals he has committed a morally reprehensible act that may solve all of Lenny’s problems. As the play proceeds, Lenny must decide what’s right and wrong.
While some will leave the theater feeling they saw this dark masterpiece that addressed every hot button issue of today, I don’t think many will be able to find a purpose in it. In the myriad attempts at disestablishing any sense of political correctness the audience may have brought to the theater, Graham creates an oversimplified portrait of the ignorance that swirls around this country. While the actors are understandably game, the characterizations are so weak their performances tend toward caricature, opening and closing with out-of-the-blue monologues that do more to bring up controversial topics than to advance story or character development. It seems Graham does not favor any sort of formalism in his plays — elements are there just to be there, and if you question them, you are going to come out baffled.
What is missing is subtlety. When Graham wants to address a philosophical subject, he makes a character a philosophy student. When he wants to represent the sordid underbelly of the city, he makes a main character a subway worker. Part of this is Graham’s obsession with a falsely neo-realistic aesthetic and part of this is he only knows how to write male characters who talk about male things. The vacuousness of his portrayal of Judaism is laughable, to say the least, like he got CliffNotes on Woody Allen’s prose and went with it. On top of all this, the characters’ backstories are not fully formed and one wonders, for example, how the blue collar Catholic Mickey ever became friends with the sedate and Jewish Lenny.
While Graham may feel his approach opens up theater to a wider audience, many will feel betrayed by the simple and haphazard dialogue and plotting. He would want you to believe this is a play that can appeal to anyone, but don’t be fooled: It is a play that could have been written by anyone.
Any Given Monday
Through March 28
At Act II Playhouse
56 East Butler Ave., Ambler
215-654-0200
info@act2.org
Tickets: $20-$30
