Under the guidance of resident artistic director Jerry Patch, the Old Globe is on a roll. Prime evidence may be seen currently in the Cassius Carter Centre Stage; to wit, a world premiere play, a rising young playwright, two impeccably cast actors, and brilliant director and design work.
The play is “The Four of Us,” written by 29-year-old, Berkeley-raised, New York University Tisch School alumni Itamar Moses, whose extraordinary historical riff, “Bach in Leipzig,” had its 2005 New York debut at the New York Theatre Workshop. Having experienced a staged reading of that play, this writer was prepared for a demanding, dense evening in the theatre.
“The Four of Us” could not be further from the expected intellectual demands; the gentle comedy is demanding in other ways. The primary requirement is that one surrender any expectation of chronological integrity. With enormous delight, the playwright skips through the ten-year friendship of two writers, Benjamin and David, from summer music camp where they met, to varying degrees of success as writers.
Freed from the constraints of sequential chronology, the play is able to illuminate the friendship, perhaps even more ably and affectingly than other such works. Not in this order, the vista ranges from the tentativeness of unformed young men to the insecurity of relatively successful adults, allowing witness of their influence on one another, the amount of neediness each brings to the relationship, and the challenges of differing success. Bit by bit, one understands why the friendship seems so cool and so remote. By the end of the evening each man is fully fleshed, human and understandably flawed, and it is from their flaws and their humanity that comedy arises.
Creating character in this jigsaw puzzle is not an easy feat for the playwright, who has a delicious trick hand to play, and certainly not for the two actors and their director.
In the play’s first scene, Benjamin (Gideon Banner) tries to underplay the $2 million deal he’s just received for his first novel, which includes foreign print rights, film rights that have already been purchased by a megastar, and a two-year public appearance tour. The envious and deflated David (Sean Dugan) reveals that his play, written during the summer the two spent as graduate students in Prague, has won a $500 new-play contest and will be produced by a regional theater in Indiana.
Pam McKinnon, who staged “Bach at Leipzig” in New York, enlists the extraordinary design work of Kris Stone (scenic), Markas Henry (costumes), Russell Champs (lighting) and Globe resident sound director Paul Peterson to fully transform the tiny Cassius Carter Centre Stage into a fitting site for the play’s numerous changes. All runs smoothly thanks to two ever-present young men in the “pit” that surrounds the playing area. It’s ingenious ” the best design since last season’s “Body of Water” in the same space.
“The Four of Us” continues through March 11 in the Cassius Carter Centre Stage at the Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, playing at 7 p.m. Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets ($39-$52), call (619) 23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.
