In “The Subject was Roses,” the subject is anything but roses.
Try dysfunction, lying, drinking, cheating and life’s ongoing disappointments. Anything but roses.
The Clearys talk to one another about anything but the subject at hand. They lie and dodge, ostensibly to protect one another’s feelings, which of course leads to the eventual evisceration of one another’s feelings.
Not much has changed in the American family in 40 years.
Frank D. Gilroy’s melancholy classic kitchen drama, which won the 1965 Tony and Pulitzer for best play, is getting a competent staging at the Arvada Center. But with the pedigree of the play and this creative team, you might naturally expect something more along the lines of gut-scraping.
It’s the Bronx, 1946. Timmy (Michael Kingsbaker) has just returned from the war without a scratch, but little does he know he’s just entered the war at home. And his unscathed military status is nothing a few nights with high-strung papa John (Paul Borrillo) won’t fix.
After the obligatory niceties of the family reunion, it doesn’t take Timmy long to discover that the cracks in the family vase he left behind three years ago have turned into gushing geysers. And it’s his own well-intentioned lie that opens the wounds wide.
Timmy buys roses for his mother Nettie (the great A. Lee Massaro), innocently crediting his father. Timmy can’t know what a consequential white lie this is. And when it is revealed, it opens the floodgates that reveal the much bigger, festering lies that now trap John and Nettie together in this loveless, hopeless marriage bound by his hypocrisy and Catholic faith.
Director Billie McBride takes an unsentimental, businesslike approach to this play, especially in a first act that, frankly, isn’t very interesting. The acting initially comes across as stilted, but it turns out that’s a herring that becomes deliciously evident when these three capable actors get down to the business of battle after intermission.
Both parents come across as believable cauldrons: John simply has issues. He always believed his wife coddled Timmy, and because he never went to war himself, John can’t accept Timmy as a bona fide, war-tested soldier.
Borrillo’s great accomplishment is his welcome and complete abandonment from any modern-day attempt to make John look sympathetic or redeeming. He’s not. He’s a lying, racist, philandering and insecure jerk who devolves into an insufferable, petulant brat. He’s a character who deserves no slack, and Borrillo cuts him none.
But Massaro is the true wonder here. She first personifies the loving mother and dutiful, wronged wife; then allows her responsibility in her own misery to become clear. Finally she offers a sign that she might evolve into a precursor of the American feminist. But it’s sadly fleeting.
Kingsbaker gets better as the play goes along, first serving as the dutiful rope in a tug of war between two selfish and damaged freaks who only want him to stay as a buffer. But he finds his Zen playing Timmy’s final drunken surrender, and as the climax played out, my heart just sank for him.
And that made me wonder if this scene played out any differently in Broadway’s Royale Theatre in 1964. Was this soldier’s sad act of domestic surrender possibly perceived then as a happy ending?
Because through today’s prism, everyone in this “American family” would be better off if all three took immediate flight – in different directions.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Subject was Roses” | *** RATING
KITCHEN DRAMA|Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd.|Written by Frank Gilroy|Directed by Billie McBride|Starring Michael Kingsbaker, A. Lee Massaro and Paul Borrillo|THROUGH FEB. 25|7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, also 1 p.m. Wednesdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays|2 hours|$36-$46|720-898-7200 or arvadacenter.org
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