Melissa Ross' new play, Of Good Stock, a Manhattan Theater Club production, directed by Lynne Meadow, belongs to the genre of literature that illuminates family misery as unique, and universal. Three sisters, the Stocktons, daughters of a famous novelist who has had at least one book that changed readers' lives, converge on a Cape Cod beach house where all three summered growing up. Literary legacy aside, the dead father's philandering had an impact on his girls. The eldest and most grounded, Jess (Jennifer Mudge), now lives in the cedar shingled house with her husband, Fred (Kelly AuCoin), a food writer; Jess wants to celebrate her birthday with family.
The sisters arrive one by one: first the youngest, Celia (Heather Lind), with a new beau, Hunter (Nate Miller), on the way, and the middle, Amy (Alicia Silverstone), with her fiancé Josh (Greg Keller). They are to be married in Tahiti; the musical invitation says it all about her obsession with the details of the perfect wedding. As if in homage to another play about three sisters, the property is an issue, as Stockton has left the house to Jess. Fueled by Freudian complexities, the sisters exit in clouds of hurt on Santo Loquasto's rotating stage, revealing the house and grounds in different settings. Declaring, "This will be my life," one character never returns. By the second act, each sister gets a rant of her own, about wounds harbored since birth, and other longings for love.
As she accomplished in Nice Girl at the Labyrinth last month, Melissa Ross brings home the emotional weight of loss, of the dread of loss to come. The Stocktons carry on, and the men react, to life-threatening illness, to fear of change. Fred and Josh share a man moment in the dunes, smoking cigars, and Hunter, the youngest of the guys, mans up to chores, exuding a healthy "I'd eat roadkill if it's prepared the right way." Perhaps hoping to shed her Clueless persona as the ultimately sweet, generous JAP Cher Horowitz, Alicia Silverstone's credits exclude this role. As Amy she whines shrill, pitiful and spoiled, an unforgettable sound that could be Cher's in a drama with siblings. In the end, Fred makes bacon, and the aroma wafts through the theater. The last time I smelled the bacon, it was at a Barrow Street production of Our Town, and it was evidence of life going on. Here too it is a reminder of love's infinite capacity for renewal -- or in family terms, things happen, and then you eat.
A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.