By Adam Cohen…
A journey into buried family secrets and legacy
Writing about Broken Snow, the Ben Andron play receiving its New York premiere at the 71st Street Theater, is a tricky proposition. Stacked with talent – Tony Danza (late of cabaret performances and Broadway’s Honeymoon in Vegas), Michael Longfellow (Saturday Night Live), and Tom Cavanagh (The Flash) – the intimate, intricately structured drama is loaded with surprises, twists and turns. You’re not more than three feet from the action.
Broken Snow centers on strangers who meet in an abandoned house. Each has a mandate steeped in slowly revealed mystique. Whether you believe the participants is part of the show’s joy. It is also about father’s, their legacy – whether they were active in a child’s life or not. Unshared history – the scars of neglectful parents – are an active presence in Andron’s three-hander. Untrustworthy reminisce and the heavy legacy of neglect should stir the pot more forcefully. The three actors are game, the staging is largely tight, the set and lights well realized. The script feels abandons logic quickly and adds a late twist that isn’t fully justified, explained, or all that interesting.
Danza unfurls a convincingly horrific dark side as a possible sociopath living off the grid willfully exercising cruelty for reasons perfectly logical only to him. A stellar example of this – a brief scene between Danza and Longfellow where as an 8 year-old feeds Longfellow a cupcake laced with cyanide. He even explains how to create it with a cadence of steady, eerie, calm. Danza dishes it out to Cavanagh with equal bile…recalling Stephen’s genesis as “biological circumstance.”
Andron slashes at theories through Kris, allowing Danza to deftly create a father steeped in cruelty, leaving his offspring in a combative quest for understanding and legacy. Longfellow is arch, sarcastic. He easily conveys the youngest child, struggling to reconcile his past while fostering deadpan armor. Cavanagh has the least to do and most uphill battle of an underwritten motivation. Why conciliate memory with a man who left him so little and settle a questionable inheritance?
Director Colin Hanlon’s production has some unconvincing fight choreography. The staging makes great use of the space. The show is laced with atmosphere, despite ample use of fake snow. Lighting designer Jeff Croiter amps up the tension with subtle shading and great use of hues. Scott Adam Davis’s set adroitly captures an old lady’s home, untouched recliner, dusty window, carefulness trash. The actor’s rise above the material, generating embers of interest in weak stakes. Andron seems to have sat at the altar of Sam Spheard’s “True West” but without fully absorbing the lessons and wit underneath the largely uncompelling familial trials.
Broken Snow runs through May 31st at Theater 71 on West 71st St. Tickets and more information at https://www.brokensnow.com.
