Ridiculous Fraud

Beth Henley has said that her 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winner Crimes of the Heart was consciously modeled on Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters; so it’s hard not to spot Ridiculous Fraud, now receiving its world premiere at the McCarter Theater, as a gender-switching take on that same play. Almost everything about this tale of three brothers in New Orleans shouts “Chekhov,” albeit with a Louisiana drawl.

As is the case with Three Sisters and the other plays by the Russian master, Ridiculous Fraud is divided into four more or less brief acts in which the members of a troubled family and their associates meet, separate, and meet again to swap confidences and resentments. When first seen, immediately after the curtain rises on Michael Yeargan’s Garden District house, Lafcad Clay (Daniel London) is cowering center stage on a sofa. Upon hearing approaching voices, the lad runs helter-skelter into the dark, rain-threatened garden. Quickly, his brothers Andrew (Reg Rogers) and Kap (Tim DeKay),along with Andrew’s wife, Willow (Ali Marsh), explode into the just-deserted living room.

They’re discussing Lafcad’s disappearance on the very night before he’s supposed to marry the Lancaster girl. They touch on other subjects as well, including Reg’s political future and the boys’ father, who has apparently been incarcerated as a result of the fraud that’s referenced in the play’s title. Eventually, they’re joined by Uncle Baites (Charles Haid), who has brought along Georgia, a drifter with a wooden leg. (This role is played by Heather Goldenhersh, a last-minute replacement for Catherine Kellner.) Also on hand to offer further hints at family dysfunction are Willow’s bombastic father, Ed (John Carroll Lynch), and his new wife, Maude Crystal (Barbara Garrick), whom Willow despises and who has recently received unfortunate medical news.

“I must hold this family together all by myself without glue,” Andrew says just before realizing that he’s obligated to reimburse the jilted Lancasters for their out-of-pocket, now pointless wedding expenses. “There’s no glue, just blood. No paste.” And so he continues, glue-lessly and cluelessly, on his mission through the succeeding three acts — each occurring in a succeeding season. Meanwhile, Lafcad’s predicament recedes while other complications intensify: Willow’s devotion to Reg wavers, implicating Kap; Baites and Georgia establish a relationship that’s threatened when he purchases an expensive diamond ring for her; Maude Crystal loses her hair, evidently as the result of chemotherapy treatment; Ed suspects that Maude is having an affair with Kap; Reg and Kap come to brutal fisticuffs. (The ubiquitous Rick Sordelet is the fight consultant, and he lends this dust-up his typical verisimilitude.)

By the following spring, the clan are gathered for a cemetery picnic. Maude is confined to a wheelchair, and Georgia is gotten up like a tombstone angel. (The fine costumes are by Tony Award winner Jess Goldstein) For the most part, they’ve all weathered the year, and the brothers are at tentative peace with one another. Or are they?

It’s one thing to write something in a traditional style and another to write it well in that style. Henley checks off the Chekhovian elements diligently, but little in her plot feels organically inspired. Her characters don’t register as fully dimensional, nor do their emotions run particularly deep. Reg’s political activities are vague, whatever motivates Kap’s detachment remains unexplored, and Lafcad amounts to not much more than tepid comic relief. Willow, unhappy in her marriage and still dominated by her father, is also insufficiently realized, and Georgia feels like a total contrivance.

Considering what the cast has been given to work with, it’s no wonder that director Lisa Peterson hasn’t gleaned much from them. On the upside, Rogers as Andrew is the most animated; then again, Rogers is always animated, no matter what play he’s in. London is certainly gawky enough, Garrick brings a certain melancholy to Maude, and Haid has his moments as the addled Baites. Though the play is not without merit, some wags might suggest that the title Ridiculous Fraud is an apt description of Henley’s work here.