The intensity of the Stassos family’s unhappiness would make Aeschylus blush. And if Aeschylus could see Zeitgeist Stage Company’s production of Flesh and Blood (at the BCA through March 4), which is adapted from Michael Cunningham’s 1995 novel spanning several generations of a Greek immigrant’s family, he might recommend that adapter Peter Gaitens divide the work, which runs three hours and 20 minutes, into a trilogy. By the end of the play, we’ve hit all the touchstones of dysfunction. Parents Constantine and Mary married too young. Dad beats brainy son Billy, seduces wholesome daughter Susan, and writes off feral, imaginative daughter Zoe with pleasant dismissiveness. Then Billy realizes he’s gay while at Harvard, Susan endures a loveless marriage to her high-school sweetheart, and Zoe fails to outgrow an instinct for mischief that leads her to drugs, a child with an AWOL father, and AIDS.
The Stassoses are a modern Tyrone clan in a more sprawling, less psychologically attuned script. Gaiten, who uses much of Cunningham’s dialogue, does narrowly manage to avoid cliché. And director David J. Miller coaxes affected behavior where necessary from a talented cast that includes Maureen Adduci as Mary, the rigid suburban matron who unleashes only flickers of emotion, Daniel Minkle as Cassandra, Zoe’s transvestite best friend, who’s wise, funny, and tragic, and Robert D. Murphy as Con, the brutish, wretched, self-made patriarch. In the limited confines of the BCA Black Box, the performers offer an expansive family portrait as they breeze through, by my count, 43 snapshots.
Machismo collides with morality in Tape (at the Community Church of Boston through February 25). And in the Boston premiere of Stephen Belber’s study of manipulation and guilt, the young As Yet To Be Theatre Company (founded in 2002) comes into its own under Robert Bettencourt’s direction. The troupe milks the limited space for its scrappy factor, which suits a play that’s set in a cheap motel room in Lansing, Michigan. High-school pals Vince (Braden Weeks) and Jon (Will Howell) reunite after a decade for a film festival, where Jon’s film is premiering. The friends’ paths have diverged, Jon going the driven route, deadbeat Vince becoming a volunteer fireman, but only because he’s the chief’s dealer. Howell plays Jon as a cocky go-getter until Vince reveals an ulterior motive — to force his old friend into making a dark confession about the girlfriend Jon stole from Vince. She’s now a district attorney in Lansing and is — surprise! — on her way over. When Amy (Lesley Gurule) makes her entrance, the power dynamics bounce around like a hot potato. And as the scenario intensifies and each character struggles with the question of how much one can truly change, each actor starts to cozy up to the character’s core.
Tape is an example of a small troupe’s auspicious timing: since the plot revolves around Vince’s taping of Jon’s confession, you can’t help but remember to be careful what you say on the phone. You never know who’s recording what these days.
