Richard Nelson's play - "Some Americans Abroad" first made its New York debut in 1990, and now it's back off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theatre. NY1's Theater Critic Roma Torre filed the following report.
“Some Americans Abroad” is a peculiar play that, like its generic title, lacks a defined point of view. I suspect playwright Richard Nelson intended this to be a stinging commentary on the hypocritical values and character of American academics while on their annual visit to the UK.
But despite its lofty ambitions, “Some Americans Abroad” doesn't really go anywhere.
Joe Taylor, the new English department head of a snooty New England college, leads his colleagues and pack of mostly unseen students on their school's tour of Britain. As they travel from point to point, the professors are revealed to be pompous, penny pinching, and spineless. And for all their arrogance and book knowledge, they are ill-equipped to handle the conflicts of the real world beyond the orderly confines of their campus.
As if to hammer home the point, director Gordon Edelstein has all the props and furniture from each scene stashed upstage in plain view. I guess it's a visual metaphor for the unavoidable mess that accumulates in our lives. Then again, maybe not.
Nothing is very clear in this play that suffers from a mixed bag of acting styles marked by too many awkward pauses and forced humor. Are we supposed to laugh with them, at them, or maybe not laugh at all?
The large cast features an assortment of new and veteran actors. It's great to see John Cunningham and Pamela Payton-Wright as politically incorrect Anglophiles, but they don't have nearly enough to do.
Tom Cavanagh from TV's “Scrubs” and the defunct series "Ed" is convincing as a friendly but aloof boss who's spent far too long navigating the stuffy confines of academia. In the end, he proves to be little more than a self-centered bureaucrat in survival mode.
His character and Anthony Rapp's, an earnest but desperate teacher, are the play's most compelling. Rapp's Henry McNeil is caught in the tenure track dilemma and he gets no help from the cowardly Taylor.
Another conflict features a "he said, she said" accusation pitting a female student against a professor. Unfortunately, neither plot turn is explored enough to elevate this beyond soap opera.
Hard to say what went wrong but between the writing, the performances and direction –- “Some Americans Abroad,” packed with intriguing ideas, simply lost its way.
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