FringeNYC Review: “Straight Faced Lies”
Writer: Mark Jason Williams / Director: Andrew Block
1 hour, 40 min.
BY YANNIC RACK | They say you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. The deeply divided household of “Straight Faced Lies” takes that premise and runs with it.
At its core you’ve got James, a shoe salesman who still lives at home to grudgingly support his single mother. Estranged sister Melissa has commitment issues at least as big as her libido — and their mother, Cathy, is desperately trying to bring the family together for Thanksgiving.
But of course, everybody arrives with their own baggage in tow. James is secretly gay and less than happy when his lover Kip suddenly knocks on the door to invite himself to dinner, while Melissa has just found out she’s pregnant by her boyfriend Joe.
Throw in Cathy’s widowed sister, the alcoholic Aunt Marie, who shows up trying to get over her latest break-up (by way of her ex’s credit card), and you’ve got yourself a classic holiday reunion scenario.
But rather than heating up all the stale clichés of family drama, writer Mark Jason Williams serves up a fresh and funny take on how complicated it can get when it comes to your own flesh and blood.
The peace doesn’t last long. Cathy’s already fragile façade falls apart completely when she finds out that her husband, who is generally referred to as Mr. Ryan, won’t be home for Thanksgiving.
The twist: he’s been away in prison for the last six years for peddling drugs while working as a pharmaceutical rep, and the evening serves as the double occasion of celebrating his homecoming.
The intermission is rung in with a gunshot, setting the tone for the second half of the play.
At times, different pairs of characters share the stage — but not the scene — to work through their issues. This device, which creates the sense of watching the plot unfold as if we’re looking into a dollhouse, comes from Andrew Block, who previously directed Williams’ play, “Recovery,” at FringeNYC in 2011.
His work shines through the performances more than once, and most impressively so during a scene of parallel conversations between Melissa and her boyfriend Joe, and James and his mother.
The couple have just found out they’re expecting a baby, and James cuts himself on a broken vase, which prompts his first outburst against his mother, who he blames for ruining his life by making him the man of the house as a teenager.
As the two conversations get increasingly intense and personal, some lines are even delivered simultaneously, to great effect. Such gimmicks alone don’t make a great play of course, so it helps that Block has assembled an all-around captivating cast.
Playing Cathy, the matriarch, Geraldine Librandi is deliciously loony in her obsessive quest to create a harmonious get-together, making her gradual descent into full-on insanity as convincing as it is fun to watch.
Although Cindy Marchionda delivers some of the most snarky lines as Marie, every character’s dialogue is consistently sharp and delivered with flair — making this a highly quotable show whose dialogue you might find yourself incorporating into conversation for days, perhaps weeks, to come.
“Oh, the f**k with this, you people are nuts!” shouts a distressed Kip halfway through the play.
With a family like this, let’s hope they pick some decent friends.
Sat. Aug. 22 at 9:30 p.m., Mon. Aug. 24 at 7 p.m., Thurs. Aug. 27 at 3 p.m. At Teatro LATEA at the Clemente (107 Suffolk St. btw. Rivington & Delancey Sts.). For tickets ($18), visit FringeNYC.org. Also purchase at FringeCentral, inside the City Lore cultural heritage center (56 E. First St. btw. First & Second Aves.), daily from 2–8 p.m. Order on your smartphone up to 30 minutes prior to performance, at FringeOnTheFly.com.
