Nick (Spencer Aste), a gay man with a new crush, is best friends with Helen (Jenny Bennett), the woman he was married to years before.
Chasing Happy, a new play by Michel Wallerstein, takes its name from the title of a best-selling, posthumously published book by John Ryan, the late partner of the play’s main character, Nick. John was killed by a gunman at a Pride parade, a crime that Nick calls “random.” Based on the excerpts Nick reads from the memoir cum self-help tome, John—who was born post-Stonewall and lived in Provincetown, Mass.—was wracked with self-loathing and shame about his homosexuality and remained closeted with many people. His book offers such banal affirmations as “I exist, I am worthy, I am love” and “Let me become who I truly am.” (Another character describes it as “one big stew of Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson and Eckhart Tolle, mixed with some gay cliché stuff.”)
Yet somehow Ryan’s book, published within the past decade, reportedly “did a lot for the community” and “saved every single gay in the country.” Nick says, “Every gay man over 30 is obsessed with the book.” This implausible (and ahistorical) scenario provides a framing device for the preposterous plot of Chasing Happy, a comedy full of exceedingly improbable behavior, overblown characterizations, jarring shifts in tone and contrived sentimentality.
Maria (Antoinette LaVecchia) carries a mug that says it all. Photographs by John Quilty.
Ten years after John’s death, Nick has just bedded Brad, a super-buff boy toy. Nick had kept going back to the bar where Brad works, in pursuit of the beauteous bartender. Although Nick insists this relationship is “serious” and “different” from his others since John, he never explains or expresses any attraction to Brad other than physical.
Soon after Brad hurries out, his furious live-in boyfriend, Rob, barges into Nick’s home. “You took something that belongs to me!” he screams, before calling Nick names, threatening to hurt him and destroying his property. Nick’s visiting friend Helen gives Rob the choice to “either sit down and talk like a normal person or leave immediately”—why would anyone in her situation suggest the former (and then offer to make him tea), and what is there for Rob to talk to them about?—so he sits down and immediately bonds with Helen, so much so that within minutes she’s telling him about major surgery she needs.
When Brad returns a short time later, despondent because Rob threw him out, he bonds even more quickly with Nick’s mother, Maria (going from I-can’t-even-show-my-face sobbing to dry-eyed contentment in a matter of seconds). Maria hatches a plan to take Brad back to Florida with her to kick-start his art career—this despite the childish nature of paintings and her gallery connections that amount to one guy who deals in “motel art.” Both Rob and Nick are forbidden to contact Brad during his four weeks away, and vice versa, and he will return with a decision about whom to be with.
Nick (Aste) and Rob (Christopher James Murray) have a moment.
Maria sets those terms, and the men agree to them. Because, of course, a quick-tempered bully like Rob would accede to the meddling of his rival’s kooky mother whom he just met. Brad has already said he prefers Nick’s kindness to feeling “crushed” by Rob—though he doesn’t seem particularly interested in either of them, and no iteration among the three of them displays any chemistry. Brad is no himbo in their estimation, but he has never heard of Lawrence of Arabia, his opinion of Hitchcock movies is “They’re really old, and most of them are in black and white,” and he says of a line in the Chasing Happy book: “‘I look into your eyes and I see the world’—it’s so deep. What does it mean?”
As Brad, Schyler Conaway is indeed a pleasure to look at. But like his castmates, he can only do so much when the characters’ behavior is so far from how people would actually act and react. Christopher James Murray gamely exerts effort in the ill-conceived role of Rob, whose mood and thoughts pivot 180 degrees seemingly every other line he speaks. Nick, played by Spencer Aste, is too much of a cipher for a story to revolve around, and it’s no fault of actress Jenny Bennett that Helen is of no real use to the story. (Why is the character British? The playwright apparently thinks her saying “dah-ling” and “bloody” serves as humor and/or character development; ditto for Rob saying “fuck” a lot.) Antoinette LaVecchia is a hoot as a geriatric Rhoda Morgenstern—or would be if she had better dialogue to speak.
After two-plus hours of this nonsense, each character reaches an emotional epiphany, and they all toast to an idea from John’s book: “Happiness is not something you chase. You let it find you.” That’s not even good advice. What’s wrong with pursuing happiness?
Pulse Theatre’s Chasing Happy runs through Nov. 11 at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd St.). Performances are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, with 3 p.m. matinees Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; theatrerow.org.
Playwright: Michel Wallerstein
Director: Alexa Kelly
Sets: Christian Fleming
Costumes: Elena Vannoni
Lighting: Joyce Liao
Sound: Joel Abbott
