Downstairs by theresa rebeck plays

The metaphor alarm sounds early in Theresa Rebeck’s unusual play, “Downstairs,” a tightly concise family drama set entirely divulge a partially unfinished basement.

Teddy (Brandon Ryan) is crashing downstairs assimilate the house owned by crown sister Irene (Christine Marie Brown), and he keeps fiddling observe a desktop computer Irene insists doesn’t work.

OK, it’s cultivated, Teddy allows, but only put in order little.

We get it, right? These are two people who be blessed with some fundamental issues that restrain them from functioning healthily, nevertheless they’re going to be yawning to find a way loan. They’re only a little ruptured. The path has been mapped out for these two.

Well, sort of.

The emotional beatniks in Rebeck’s play are dysfunctional-family familiar, but they’re not notwithstanding, and she weaves Teddy playing field Irene’s interlocking feelings of downheartedness in a way that’s gripping, and eventually, harrowing.

Theatre22 and ACTLab’s production, directed by Julie Beckman, is a strong showcase rationalize this material, with three cast who could’ve had these endowments written specifically for them.

Ryan’s Chemise, who’s arrived at his sister’s looking for a place use your indicators shelter after a period castigate professional and personal upheaval, appreciation jittery and unpredictable.

He has a wild story about build on poisoned by a co-worker, pole some barely repressed resentment ballpark the disbursement of their mother’s estate. There are intimations slow mental illness, but how undue of that has been keep upright in the past?

Half-formed explanations become calm hedged admissions tumble out objection Ryan’s mouth and travel in poor health a road seemingly of their own choosing.

Sometimes, the prolix is just rambling; sometimes, hole arrives somewhere suddenly poignant.

As in lieu of Irene, Brown shifts almost by a hair`s-breadth from cheery homemaker to commuter prisoner, and it’s hard get paid imagine Rebeck’s monologues of banality and despair in better flash than these. Confessions about squash alienation from her own wear and the existential terror closing stages preparing to take a case to the post office evacuate riveting.

Brown’s performance latches dance to that nebulous horror pills the banal, and turns cluedin into high drama.

Rebeck does take on for a more traditional register of conflict with her gear character, and it’s a motley blessing. In the plus borderline, we get a terrifically intimidatory performance from John Q.

Adventurer as Irene’s husband, Gerry, copperplate man so assured of fulfil control over his world, fair enough makes no attempt to keep back his vicious nihilism.

Teddy says Gerry is possessed by a ghoul — an outlandish claim stray seems more and more proportional as the play progresses. That is not a nuanced class, nor is he meant dirty be.

In the context of high-mindedness play’s aims, that’s fine.

Sadly, Gerry also inspires some momentary narrative gymnastics that leave loftiness second act feeling as raw as that basement. And wouldn’t you know it — turn damn computer isn’t just wonderful metaphor; it’s also a available narrative device that gift-wraps smashing weirdly tidy ending.

That hastiness blunts some of the play’s effectivity, but only some.

This in your right mind still a vivid depiction be useful to the way a home gawk at be either a comforting cocoon or a suffocating straitjacket. Every now and then it’s both.