By Samuel L. Leiter…

Cracked Open examines the emotional, social, and psychological fractures within a Brooklyn family when their high-achieving daughter suddenly exhibits signs of mental illness.

Gail Kriegel’s Cracked Open, at Theatre Row, is about an attractive, well-educated, loving, but flawed, Brooklyn family: Mae (Pamela Bob), the Jewish mom, is a struggling architect; Richard (Bart Shatto), the non-Jewish dad, is a local TV newsman; Tilde (Katherine Reis), is the high-performing 18-year-old daughter, just graduating from high school; Edith (Blaire Dimisa), is the bright 11-year-old daughter; Lillian (Lisa Pelikan) is the widowed grandma; and, Michael (Paul Castree), the obligatory gay character, is Rich’s brother, a cameraman. 

What will go wrong? Plenty, of course, which happens when athlete-scholar Tilde (whose original name, Matilda, inspired by the song, practically forms a leitmotif) suddenly displays symptoms of mental illness. Her condition becomes the trigger for Cracked Open, a painfully awkward attempt to dramatize the dilemma of how an average family might confront such a sinkhole in their lives.

The question, of course, is one countless families must deal with. There’s an enormous amount to explore in how a bombshell like this can crack open a family’s veneer, emotionally, socially, financially, and psychologically. Similarly, there’s much to examine in the negative ways society stigmatizes mental illness, some of which are ham-handedly inserted into Cracked Open. 

But as dealt with in this shoestring production, whose many scenes are indicated—on a black stage—by a few pieces of furniture carried on and off by the actors, the choices are decidedly off. As Dr. Guzman (Scott Harrison), the renowned doctor brought in to diagnose Tilde’s condition says, sans explanation, “Something is not right here,” which can as easily be applied to the play, including Kriegel’s decision to direct it.

Barebones productions can sometimes click, with imaginative staging, but Kriegel, working with a cast of 11 playing over 30 roles, hasn’t the gift for artfully glueing it all together under such limited circumstances. For much of the 90 minutes’ running time, she has her actors, competent but desperately in need of help, stand and deliver their lines straight to the audience, not only in scenes for which direct address might be justified but in scenes when they’re talking—usually loudly—to each other. And even when they talk directly to one another, few moments go beneath the skin. In a play about the complex issues of human engagement, having the actors speak so often while facing away from each other, creates an intellectual and emotional estrangement, when just the opposite is demanded by the subject matter.

Transitions are often clumsy, Yang Yu’s limited lighting (which suffered a glitch at the preview I attended) is insufficient, and character behavior is artificial. A scene that seeks to satirize the inadequacy of mental health treatment, diagnoses, medications, and solutions by creating a routine of dreamlike exposition lacks comedic inspiration. And, despite the inherent possibilities in the subject, the straightforwardly realistic material is too often simplistic and uninvolving.

The dramatic action, which intends to represent how an average family might handle the discovery that their seemingly perfect daughter has mental problems, is set, for some inexplicable reason, in 1995. Kriegel forces the situation by having Rich, the father, reject the idea of informing anyone outside the family circle of Tilde’s condition because he’s not only deeply embarrassed by it, but afraid it will endanger his employment status. 

While there is, of course, an understandable rationale for his feeling this way in a culture that often lacks empathy for the mentally ill, he breaks the camel’s back when he tells his wife that, in his desperation to avoid having information about Tilde’s illness filed somewhere, he removed her from the family health insurance. Yet Mae protests that their expenses are overwhelming, making his choice incomprehensible. Consequently, Tilde will have to be placed in a distant public facility in the Bronx. 

If anyone needs to have his head examined it’s Rich, whose job as a journalist, if he were real, would make him more aware than most of how bizarre his behavior is. He might even make his position more compelling by being able to share his compassion for the mentally ill by virtue of his child’s situation, something not unlike what many other journalists have done in analogous circumstances. Not only is he clueless in this regard, his inadequacy as a father, reporter, and dramatic character becomes even more egregious when he’s assigned to cover an act of violence committed at his daughter’s facility. 

Numerous moments arise when it’s impossible to suspend one’s disbelief; so many, in fact, that I suggest you take my word for it so I can stop beating a dead horse. The way in which Tilde’s difficulties are resolved, partly through a new friendship with a girl named—groan—Hope (Madeline Grace Jones), who practically emerges out of nowhere, is as banal as everything that comes before. Hope may be a virtue many cling to, but without us being given more substance on which to base that hope, it comes off simply as a device for bringing this depressing play—more because of its faltering execution than its laudable intentions—to something resembling an upbeat end.

Cracked Open is playing at Theatre Row, 410 E. 42nd Street, NYC, Through June 28

Photos: Russ Rowland