Phillyist Reviews... Third

When Third, playwright Wendy Wasserstein's swan song, first debuted in New York, it was met with largely tepid reviews. It seems as if many felt that Wasserstein's creative energy, once so true to life—both her own and more generally so—that it earned her the first Tony ever given to a female playwright, had fizzled with her prolonged bout with cancer. And to a degree, this is true: Third is not nearly so strong a script as some of Wasserstein's earlier works.

That being said, Philadelphia Theatre Company's new production of the late playwright's final work, directed by Mary B. Robinson, is a solid one, thanks in no small part to the fact that, even at her weakest, Wasserstein easily trumps many of her contemporaries. Third, whose title is derived from both a character's nickname and the idea that another character—the lead character—is entering the third and final stage of her life, centers around Laurie (Lizbeth Mackay), an English professor at an elite New England college with an interesting take on King Lear. Teetering on the age of menopause and furious at Bush's declaration of war on Iraq (the show is set in 2002 – 2003), Laurie seems determined to take her frustrations out on anyone who she perceives to be of another mind than she. Enter Third (Will Fowler), a personable, if perhaps conservative, Midwesterner, whose father and grandfather both attended the college. Already set on writing him off as just another legacy student, Laurie balks upon hearing his request for an extension on a paper—due to a wrestling conflict. Now convinced that Third truly doesn't belong in her class, or indeed, in so elite a university, Laurie is certain that Third's paper—handed in on time—is no more than a work of plagiarism. The rest of the play deals, in a sometimes funny, often touching, and frequently unnerving way, with the fallout of this accusation.

Mackay and Fowler play the parts that they're cast in quite well, especially considering that each is a bit of a stereotype they're trying to convince others they're not—she, the angry feminist who thinks all the world's problems begin once you leave the Blue States and he, the sweet, naive Red Stater who probably holds his convictions because he's never been East before. The one-dimensional aspects of their characters sometimes get a bit heavy-handed, and of course, each character grows and becomes more insightful in the end, but given the textual flaws, none of the fault can be put on either actor. Also in the cast is the excellent Melanye Finister, playing Laurie's cancer-stricken but still more optimistic friend, Nancy, as well as Jennifer Blood (Laurie's daughter, Emily) and Ben Hammer (Laurie's father, Jack). The supporting characters are a bit less flat than the leads and probably keep the show from becoming too one-note, and all together, the five actors in the play form the strongest cast PTC has seen yet this season.

(A final word on the production itself before leaving you to scroll to the next post on Phillyist: set designer James Noone and lighting designer Russel Champa really helped to make the play work. Their designs worked excellently together, making for simple transitions between scenes by merely lighting different parts of the overlapping windows that made the stage's backdrop. Somehow, even on the large Suzanne Roberts stage, less managed to be more in this production.)