After Ashley

Sometimes you want to say “See here!” to a playwright who hasn’t marshaled her obvious talents in readying an ambitious work. This ordinarily tolerant reviewer had that impulse after seeing Gina Gionfriddo’s After Ashley, whicn made a joyful noise at Louisville’s 2004 Humana Festival and is now getting a New York premiere with a cast including Kieran Culkin and Anna Paquin under the direction of Terry Kinney.

Gionfriddo is angry about the right things and correct to vent her rage in play form. What upsets her in our mucho sicko society is that crimes, in their aftermath, can be transmogrified into entertainment. She’s infuriated, for instance, that aspects of a grisly murder can come to be sampled for a Top-10 hip-hop hit. She’s hot under the collar about people who maintain a sanctimonious façade while riding misfortune to pop-cultural success. Given the national slide into highly paid incivility and crass opportunism, who would argue with the dramatist about these concerns?

Yet argument is called for in regard to the disorganized manner in which Gionfriddo presents her agitation. The play itself is rather convoluted. Justin (Culkin), first seen recovering from mononucleosis, is having a conversation with his troubled but loving mother, Ashley (Dana Eskelson), during which she chats inappropriately about her unfulfilled sex life. Ashley is murdered shortly thereafter by a homeless man who’d been gardening at the Bethesda address; eventually, Justin’s father Alden (Tim Hopper) begins writing a book about the notoriety that’s come to him and his son. Justin, you see, had made an emotional 911 call in which he’d insisted that he wouldn’t leave his dead mother’s side until the police arrived. The recorded announcement was nationally publicized and the response that it received prompted Alden to pen After Ashley, in which he questions those who claimed that the family’s fatal mistake was befriending a homeless man.

Alden and Justin, both now famous, are invited to appear on a crime-stoppers program where Justin snidely airs his dissatisfaction with celebrity at the expense of an accurate portrayal of his mother. Alden, feeling different about the opportunity given him to help others in similar straits, accepts the offer of the show’s host/producer David (Grant Shaud) to take over the show himself. Father and son move to central Florida; there, Justin meets Julie (Paquin), who recognizes him as the 911 fellow and is as skilled as he at sizing people up. Although Justin keeps his guard up with sarcastic comments, Julie sticks around to serve as accomplice in a scheme to undermine Alden’s TV series. She’s also present to help put the kibosh on a shelter for battered women that the sneaky David contrives to name after Ashley.

Much of Gionfriddo’s jeremiad is compelling. Justin’s initial reaction to his mother’s discussion of her sex life — “You need to phone a friend or, like, write in a diary,” he admonishes her — is mature. So is his defense of his father against Ashley’s baiting. The non-stop cynicism by which Justin expresses his grief also rings true. And although Julie goes around in a somber Goth ensemble that costume designer Laura Bauer has put together for her, she has a head on her shoulders which she uses in her attempt to get through to Justin. Throughout the play, Gionfriddo inserts amusingly macabre observations and touches, such as her depiction of David’s talk show.

The problem is that the playwright doesn’t know when to stop. While she’s correct in thinking that certain types of television programming are maddeningly exploitative, she refuses to see the possibility for any kind of humanity in them. But we all know, for example, that John Walsh, whose son Adam was abducted and who hosted a program like David’s, was never the unadulterated smarm-bucket that this guy is. For that matter, Alden — whom Justin insists in the first scene is a good father — is depicted as an obtuse man in denial about his wife’s problems. Another unmitigated jackass is Roderick (Mark Rosenthal), a flamboyant fellow in possession of a videotape on which Ashley may be seen behaving like a libertine. In short, Gionfriddo’s portraits of the three older characters in the play are two-dimensional caricatures; it’s the young folks who possess worldly wisdom.

The many positive qualities of After Ashley are also compromised by a few flabby scenes in which Gionfriddo loses temporary sight of where she’s going. Furthermore, there’s an unbelievable turn of events in which Justin and Anna go about securing the trouble-making tape by agreeing to carry out some curious orders from the self-proclaimed sex therapist Roderick.

Nevertheless, any reviewer who’s tempted to make a “See here!” speech to Gionfriddo should also offer “Keep going!” encouragement to her and should express gratitude to the other members of the production team: to set designer Neil Patel for his adaptable surroundings; to Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen for the sound design and original music (especially the hip-hop number that samples Justin’s 911 outcry); to lighting designer David Lander. Much gratitude also to Keiran Culkin, whose anger and worry invade his entire body; to Anna Paquin for making Julie so sweetly intelligent; to Dana Eskelson for showing unmitigated maternal love mixed with wifely discontent; and to Terry Kinney for his sure directorial hand. After Ashley is flawed but Gionfriddo’s outrage is genuine.