Point of View: Engaged
As I said last week, I immediately dialed up the Roundabout Theatre’s box office when I read a rave review of “The Humans” in The Times — a moment or so before Mary said she’d been wanting to see “Hamilton.”
I felt both decisive and tentative, knowing that my previous Wednesday bus trip pick, a film at the old Waverly in which absolutely nothing happened, had been a strike against me arts-wise. “At least we both got some sleep,” I said.
Of course, the reviewer’s words were there for all to see at the Roundabout’s entrance the other day: “Quite possibly the best play of the season,” or something to that effect.
“ ‘Possibly the best,’ ” she said, emphasizing the possibly.
“ ‘Quite possibly,’ ” I countered, hoping that this wouldn’t be strike two.
There was no sleeping this time, not even a catnap. We were engaged from the first moment by Stephen Karam’s Blakes, a middle-class family of six living on the edge, trying its level best to celebrate Thanksgiving, when, really, there was not a whole lot to celebrate.
“This is beginning to hit home,” I said early on — to a blank stare from a woman seated to my left — after Brigid, the young daughter, reminded her father that given her student loan debt a ground floor apartment in a flood zone was the best she and her fiancé could do. I wanted to get up and join the conversation.
But humor abounded, the dialogue was crisp, and for most of the play wit pushed back the weight of suffering whose reach became increasingly evident. Consequently, the audience laughed far more than it cried, which is about the way it is in our family, though admittedly we have been luckier than the Blakes so far.
“The Humans” was neither maudlin nor sentimental, but rang true — a perfect play for a day in which we, in a way, replighted our troth, first at the New York Public Library, then at Times Square, the Roundabout, and the cellar bar at the Bryant Park Hotel. At one with ourselves, engaged, happy.