What makes “Life x 3” such an intriguing new play is not just that it presents three different ways one awful dinner party might transpire.
It’s that all three end in disasters ranging from comic to heartbreaking.
Unlike “Sliding Doors” and a host of films that show monumental consequences from the slightest change in any chain of events, Yasmina Reza’s disquieting “Life x 3” suggests that even for one couple, fundamental truths about their inalterably unsatisfying union will prevail.
Whether this couple’s 6-year-old is a hysterically hysterical brat in one scenario or a sleeping angel in the next … whether the husband is doomed by insecurity or unflappable … whether the wife is an acerbic shrew or more understanding … there is no puzzle configuration that leaves them happy and in love. Perhaps this jaundiced view doomed “Lx3” to middling notices from the New York press in 2003.
That’s just what makes Bas Bleu’s astutely performed Fort Collins staging directed by Robert Reid so compelling – even if the premise runs out of gas by its third turn.
Reza, a Frenchwoman best known for the superior “Art,” this time offers Henry and Sonia, portrayed by the winning duo of Sotirios Livaditis and Brenna A. Freestone. The play opens with a riotous scene of parental dysfunction that qualifies as pure farce – one driven not by physical comedy, but cruel and catty verbal gymnastics.
Henry is a frustrated young physicist who hasn’t been published in years. Tonight he coddles his temperamental son (the voice of Brandon Short) at bedtime while preoccupied wife Sonia characterizes her little hellion as “a pain in the (bleep).” Then, a doorbell: Henry’s colleague Hubert (Rich Hicks), who has the power to revive Henry’s career, has arrived for a dinner our hosts believe is scheduled for the next night.
But Hubert is more interested in goading wife Inez (the terrific Stephanie Jones) over the run in her stockings and taunting Henry that he will be beaten to the punch on his research project – a study that will prove “the flatness of galaxy halos.” It’s no accident Henry’s future hinges on a meaningless discovery with no practical bearing on everyday life.
This point is conveyed by Inez, one more reason Jones turns in such a potent performance. Inez is the most identifiable and authentic character, and her dissolution is the most grounded in reality.
Through the course of the impeccable first scene, the four display a pathological need to bicker, flirt and dish, which they do with smart eloquence. But the play is never as interesting again. That the basic scenario changes little in the next two rounds has proven trying for audiences and critics alike – which I suspect is Reza’s point.
The second take is crueler, the third more melancholy. Henry grows more unmoored while Sonia tightens her moorings. But the situation is all but the same. The finale in which audiences might reasonably expect these couples to finally get things right, never comes. That’s the point.
But the naysayers are probably correct in asserting that, in the end, “Life x 3” should have something more definitive to say about being immune to fate.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Life x 3” | *** RATING
DRAMA|Bas Bleu Theatre Company, 401 Pine St., Fort Collins|THROUGH JULY 22|7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays| 1 hour, 45 minutes|$10-$19|970-498-8949 or basbleu.org
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-John Moore
