Story of aging artist's threat to ignite building doesn't set off sparks, despite efforts of Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella
“The Velocity of Autumn” isn’t it.
Toggling between glib one-liners and florid speeches, Eric Coble’s two-hander adds nada to this topical conversation, along the way wasting a meaty subject, the talents of Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella and the audience’s time and money.
The show lands on Broadway following a run in Washington, D.C., but director Molly Smith’s production is static, which means “park here and holler” (for Parsons) and “stand there and speak softly” (for Spinella).
That’s basically what goes down for an hour and a half in a Brooklyn brownstone where widowed Alexandra (Parsons), a 79-year-old artist, has barricaded herself in lieu of being sent to a nursing home. She’s got the Molotov cocktails ready, and has a lighter in her hand. Either she stays — or the building goes.
Long-estranged son Chris (Spinella), a middle-aged drifter with a gray ponytail and bad luck with men, is summoned by his two siblings to defuse the bomb that is Mom.
The inevitable conclusion is supposed to show how explosive life can turn. But the story presents life in such broad strokes and black and white that there’s nothing at stake.
Performances are likewise unshaded. Spinella has won Tonys for his nuanced work in “Angels in America.” But that form is nowhere to be found here, including an overemotive speech punctuated with fists flying up and down and in and out. It’s too little — and too much.
Parsons has made a career of full-throttle performances, stretching from her Oscar-winning work in “Bonnie and Clyde” to “August: Osage County” on stage. But she’s monochromatic and screechy here.
She quiets down occasionally, as when she informs Chris she knows that his being gay made his dad “uncomfortable. Like Gorgonzola cheese.”
“I have no idea how to respond to that,” he responds.
But this play elicits a definite response: avoid.
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