Tommy (Will Sarratt, left) with his mother, Anne (Marcia Debonis), in Stephen Brown’s Everything Is Super Great.
Stephen Brown’s Everything Is Super Great presents a group of likable, oddball, and somewhat hapless characters who don’t really fit in anywhere in the suburban Texas world they inhabit, but bond with one another amid unexpected circumstances. The word “great” works in the play as a form of deliberate denial, but also something genuinely hopeful: life is a series of vexations, large and small, for everyone on stage, and yet the characters, and the play itself, search for little moments of meaning and connection.
Produced by New Light Theater Project and Stable Cable Lab Co., Everything Is Super Great is in the miniscule Theater C at 59E59, though thanks to clever but uncomplicated direction (Sarah Norris), lighting design (Elaine Wong), and scenic design (Brian Dudkiewicz), space never seems a limitation for a play that ranges over multiple settings in a series of short scenes. One example is the items on the walls can cue the audience in on location (a small Starbucks or Walmart sign will illuminate) or take on emotional significance depending on the setting.
Tommy looks skeptical of his new therapist, Dave (Xavier Rodney, right).
Tommy (Will Sarratt) is nineteen and has been accepted into the University of Texas, but is “taking like a gap year thing right now” after he was charged with a felony (which later got talked down to a misdemeanor) for attempted arson at the Applebee’s at which he used to work. Now he works at Starbucks, and has promised his anxious, well-intentioned mother, Anne (Marcia Debonis), that he will do anger-management therapy. When the audience first meets Tommy and Anne it is while Tommy attempts to record a video on his laptop and Anne, a voice from the other side of the door, interrupts with questions and offers of pop-tarts (her specialty/obsession).
While that opening scene perfectly encapsulates the dynamic of this mother-son relationship, it is soon revealed that an incident hovers over the household: Tommy’s older brother has been missing for some time. This isn’t often spoken of directly, but it informs every word and action. It is his brother whom Tommy is speaking to in his laptop recordings, with some distant hope that he is checking in from time to time.
Tommy with his colleague at Starbucks, Alice (Lisa Jill Anderson, right), in the break room. Photographs by Hunter Canning.
Two characters enter Tommy’s and Anne’s lives: Tommy’s manager at Starbucks, Alice (Lisa Jill Anderson), dark, biting, and cynical, and at first uninterested in forming any kind of friendship, and Dave (Xavier Rodney), an affable, ineffectual art-therapist of dubious credibility who used to work with Anne at Walmart. Both Alice and Dave have people disappear from their lives, too, at least temporarily: Alice’s Alzheimer’s-suffering mother and Dave’s ex-girlfriend. And all the characters have anger or anxiety issues that rival Tommy’s—it is not confidence-inspiring for Tommy when his therapist tells him, “Look it’s really hard finding work as an art therapist especially when you have an anxiety disorder and your only work experience is at Walmart and then your girlfriend who you love more than like anything else ever leaves one day and you have no idea where she went … but like everything has been terrible for a long time now and I just feel super lost pretty much every day.”
The play achieves some genuinely tender and moving moments and generates laughter along the way. There are a couple of scenes that are clear in intent but don’t ring true emotionally or psychologically, sometimes hampered by attempts at zany repartee. Brown’s writing and the acting are at their best when focused on the small and intimate details of the characters’ lives. Everything Is Super Great is refreshing in its lack of fashionable cynicism: it doesn’t condescend toward its characters, no matter how vulnerable or messy they can be. There’s something hopeful in this collection of lost souls coming together at Christmas, yet without the saccharine clichés that plague so many holiday stories.
Everything Is Super Great runs through December 14 at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street). Evening performances are Tuesday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are Saturday-Sunday at 2:30 p.m. For tickets and information, visit 59E59.org or call 646-892-7999.
