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Review: Benjamin Franklin Is a Great Founding Father but a Lousy Real Father in Franklinland

Lloyd Suh’s comedic take on the inventor of bifocals runs at Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Pete Hempstead

Pete Hempstead

| Off-Broadway |

October 22, 2024

Franklinland 05
Noah Keyishian and Thomas Jay Ryan star in Lloyd Suh’s Franklinland, directed by Chika Ike, at Ensemble Studio Theatre.
(© Jeremy Daniel)

Superior minds don’t always make for good parents. That’s certainly the case with Benjamin Franklin and his less-than-superior son, William, in Franklinland, Lloyd Suh’s 2018 riff on one of America’s most formidable thinkers. Suh takes comedic potshots at Franklin while hitting on some milestones of his life (his explanation of electricity, his co-founding of America), but he plays fast and loose with Franklin’s relationship with his real-life son William. It’s a concocted rivalry that seems amped up for comedy, but under Chika Ike’s lugubrious direction, the humor merely rumbles like distant thunder.

The play spans the years from Franklin’s experiment with lightning in 1752 to his participation in the experiment of American democracy in 1785. Suh’s versions of Franklin (Thomas Jay Ryan) and William (Noah Keyishian) rarely see eye to eye. The bastard offspring of a prostitute, William feels his intellectual inferiority to his father, a feeling inflamed by Dad’s insensitive comments. Almost as an act of rebellion, William remains loyal to the crown and becomes governor of New Jersey. He then tries to arrest the revolutionary Franklin for treason. But Dad is on the right side of history, and William is forced to make his home on a parcel of land in Nova Scotia.

The real Franklin did, in fact, own land there, and Suh takes that historical tidbit as nonhistorical inspiration for his character’s idea of founding Franklinland, a community where scientists and scholars could live and work. Franklin, so far as we know, never had any such thought, but history isn’t what Suh is concerned with. It’s rather the perennial struggle of a son trying to assert his independence from his father while trying to make him proud.

The comedic potential of a brilliant, tyrannical father at odds with a dull son almost writes itself, and it comes to fruition in Franklinland now and then with Suh’s cheeky dialogue and a few funny scenes, such as when Franklin tells William how he’s invented a new flexible kind of catheter.

Franklinland 06
Noah Keyishian, Mason Reeves, and Thomas Jay Ryan in Lloyd Suh’s Franklinland, directed by Chika Ike, at Ensemble Studio Theatre.
(© Jeremy Daniel)

Unfortunately, this production is generally about as funny as a kidney stone. Ike’s pacing could not be more at odds with snappy one-liners, beleaguered as it is with vast pauses that bring the action to a standstill and extended jokes that start off funny then turn into lead balloons (Ryan has a coughing fit so uncomfortably long we wonder if it’s real).

Ike’s direction doesn’t help the actors’ performances, either. Ryan seems to stumble over his lines as he and Keyishian try to create some sort of comedic chemistry. The two do their best with what they’re given, but we can hear the strained pauses where laughter is expected yet never comes.

At least Riw Rahhulchon’s highly detailed set gives us lots to look at when our attention drifts. Benjamin’s workshop is stuffed with scientific tools and other bits and bobs (props by Thomas Jenkeleit) to remind us of his prolific imagination, including a sky-blue kite on the wall. Christopher Vergara’s period-inspired costumes are also on point, with Keyishian cutting a figure in a symbolic red coat. A team of sound designers (Daniela Hart, Bailey Trierweiler, Noel Nichols, and Uptown Works) inject odd calliope music between scenes together with Carolina Ortiz Herrera’s sometimes confusing lighting (a bolt of lightning inexplicably turns a night scene dark).

The final moments of this 70-minute play see the arrival of William’s son, William Temple Franklin, played with quiet poise by Mason Reeves, who quickly steals the scene from Ryan and Keyishian. This new father and son have a healthy, loving relationship built on respect and pride. It’s a tacked-on resolution to let us leave the theater with the thought that we need not repeat the mistakes of those who have come before — but it’s something good to keep in mind as we continue to tinker with Franklin’s American experiment.

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