Should you be fortunate enough to make it overseas this summer, you should also be lucky enough not to encounter the band of pretentious, penny-pinching academics sketched by Richard Nelson in his decidedly modest 1989 satire Some Americans Abroad, which is receiving a curiously spotty revival at Second Stage Theatre.

Neither director Gordon Edelstein nor most of his less-than-ideally chosen cast manage to find much of the humanity in Nelson's troubled troupe, leaving audiences with the problematic experience of spending over two hours with a group of unpleasant and somewhat pathetic people. Just as the show's central character, Joe Taylor (Tom Cavanagh) desperately wishes to escape from t[...]