The Bachelors

Unless you plan on giving me step by step directions over the phone, don't expect me to be able to find my way around the West Village. Finding Rattlestick Playwrights Theater was an adventure. Let's just say I might've called for backup and Amanda (I just assume at this point my "readers" are people who know who I'm talking about...) had to come rescue me. Really I'm making this all out to be more dramatic than necessary.

The Bachelors is a new play written by Caroline V. McGraw. This production was directed by Portia Krieger, the Associate Director of Fun Home, and starred Black DeLong, Quincy Dunn-Baker, and Babak Tafti. I was immediately interested in seeing the show after hearing that Babak had been cast as I'd seen (and loved) him in The North Pool and at Barrington Stage Company (the summer I was interning there) in Much Ado About Nothing. Also, I got a free ticket for volunteering to usher... so even more exciting.

I was told I would enjoy The Bachelors. I was told it was "my kind of thing" and yeah, it definitely was. An all-male cast, naturalistic/realistic, kind of gross, kind of sad, very dysfunctional. My kind of play. I enjoyed the show. I didn't love the theater itself, and I found the squeakiness of the chairs distracting. I know it sounds like a stupid complaint, but there were times when audience members moved around so much I was convinced the squeaking was playing on a track in the background of the play. All squeaking aside, the acting was quite good. Each of the three men had established personalities that were all different, but you could see how they kind of fell into this easy way of living together without really knowing each other. They're all scared of growing up. I hated each of them at different moments throughout for very different reasons.

The practically scathing review in the NY Times was, in my opinion (but really what does that matter), unjust. The script, while not perfect, is not the shit show the Times review makes it out to be. My biggest issue was the two times the play took a sharp turn away from the realistic world the characters were living in. For those of you who had the fortune of seeing the show, I'm talking about the door moments. If you haven't seen the show it doesn't matter -- just know there are two moments where the front door magically opens and the characters are like OMG A GHOST.

Good stuff happening at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. And a good foray into the work of Lesser America (the company that put the production on) for me.