Many Americans are sad.Take the fictional Blake family of Scranton, PA. New York audiences and critics got to know the Blakes in Stephen Karam’s Broadway hit “The Humans” in 2015-16 and responded with applause and critical kudos, including a Tony Award. A Lebanese-American native of Scranton, Karam creates characters who reflect the edgy and uneasy pride of people living in the struggling cities of northeastern Pennsylvania.
But as the most recent “World Happiness Report” confirmed, even as the economy has slowly, unevenly improved working people in the U.S. (i.e., just about all of us) are getting less happy. It’s a malaise caused by more than just the current political realignment, war talk and the opioid epidemic. The second and third generations of the working folks who built the U.S. are falling further and further behind economically, and many don’t understand why.
In a bold move the Walnut Street Theatre and producing artistic director Bernard Havard are the first to stage “The Humans” in Philadelphia for a regional premiere. “The Humans” will introduce Walnut audiences generally accustomed to lighter fare to what’s billed as a “funny, hopeful and touching” comedy-drama.
Yes, at moments Karam’s unflinching examination of the way we live now (in ninety minutes of real time with no intermission) is both funny and touching. Hopeful….well, that’s for the audience to decide.
The Blakes are sad. But they’d be furious if you felt sorry for them. Their story is not another story of small town strivers coming to Gotham with starry eyes. The Blakes know all too well what’s happened to them. Many of their woes are ours.
That’s because the Blakes are charter members of the “precariat,” defined by labor historian John Russo as former middle-class folks laid off or stuck in low-paying jobs that (barely) pay the bills and who have few options in the new economy. The “recovery” of the past decade has refloated the boats of a large handful of the professional class and the many online manipulators of currency and data but has left nearly everyone else in steerage.
In The Humans the Blakes are getting together for Thanksgiving as usual but with a new place to celebrate – the dark, grimy two-story (action occurs in the basement and on the ground floor) apartment of Brigid Blake (Alex Keiper) and her social-worker-in-training boyfriend Richard Saad (Ibrahim Miari) in New York’s Chinatown.
Brigid’s parents Erik and Deirdre (Greg Wood and Mary Martello), along with her older sister Aimee (Jennie Eisenhower) and Erik’s mother Momo (Sharon Blake) have arrived for an attenuated feast in the unfurnished new apartment. We learn that Erik has spent three decades as maintenance man at a private school, Deirdre’s an office manager and Aimee is a Philadelphia lawyer – three careers on or near the knife edge of obsolescence. Momo is wheelchair-bound and lost in dementia.
As the evening progresses through a natural dialogue of close family members laughing, arguing, mumbling, whispering and talking over each other we learn about a series of setbacks. Aimee is about to be laid off from the law firm, her girlfriend has left her and her ulcerative colitis will require a major operation. Brigid wants to compose music but is deep in student debt and saddled with doubts about her ability.
Erik is proud of having put two children through private colleges, caring for his mother at home, keeping food on the table and even planning to build a lake home for retirement. He’s uneasy about the changes that have transformed his hometown, unhappy about Brigid living in Manhattan (where they were both temporarily marooned on 9/11) and worried about his children’s career struggles. As the price of everything continues to rise and the fragile lifelines of their jobs become more critical than ever, he half-jokingly wonders to Richard “Don’t you think it should cost less to be alive?”
Erik and Deirdre have found a compromise of bare necessity in their marriage and two-income household. But as Erik’s copes with his role frustrations take their toll. His fate is similar to those of novelist Philip Roth’s male characters, who Roth describes as “bowed by blurred moral vision, real and imaginary culpability, conflicting allegiances, urgent desires… and, repeatedly, inescapable harm, the rude touch of the terrible surprise – unshrinking men stunned by the life one is defenseless against… the unforeseen that is constantly recurring as the current moment…”
It is Erik’s fate to be culpable enough to drop a weight on the Blake family scale that could tip them all over. As the Blakes prepare to leave after dinner, ominous, unfamiliar sounds echo from the neighboring apartment and light bulbs burn out one by one, leaving rooms in shadow and Erik alone to face the harshly lit outline of an uncertain future.
Local stage veteran Greg Wood is perfectly cast as the stoic, reticent but keenly observant Erik. Barrymore Award winner Mary Martello as Deirdre Blake is the neighborhood conscience, a survivor at once both quietly sarcastic and fiercely defensive about her struggling family. Keiper and Eisenhower each provide a measured and skillful, natural unfolding of their respective characters trying to cope with diminished expectations and uncertain futures. Sharon Blake as Momo has one of the most difficult roles, as marooned in her wheelchair with few lines beyond angry ranting, she must project the desperation of a loving soul trapped inside a body she can’t control.
Roman Tatarowicz has splendidly recreated the battered Depression-era Chinatown duplex where the Blakes get together, with a massive wall of neighboring red brick tenements outside and inside an almost palpable ruin of crumbling drywall, peeling paint and ghostly linoleum. To allow the audience to see both floors at once, the precarious open edge of the ground floor looms high above the basement like the foredeck of a sinking ship.
Those audience members waiting for Momo in her wheelchair or some other cast member to topple through the set’s “fourth wall” and down into the basement will be disappointed but it certainly adds to the dramatic tension.
IF YOU GO
The Humans is onstage at the Walnut Street Theatre, 825 Walnut St. in Philadelphia through March 4. For tickets call 215-574-3550 or go to www.walnutstreettheatre.com
