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A CurtainUp Review
Branched
Jordan G. Teicher
"I was positive and assertive at school today even in the midst of a conflict!"— Ben
Branched
Michelle David, Andrew Blair & Tara Westwood in Branched. (Photo by Jason White).
It doesn't require much nudging to find the humor in a family that ceremonially undresses together, adheres to a diet inspired by cavemen and invokes Universal Energy before meals. But Erin Mallon's new play, Branched, which follows such a family, ribs you so many times it starts to hurt. The makings of a biting satire of contemporary life are there, but an unnecessary grab for extra laughs spells its all too quick descent into absurdity and physical comedy.

It begins promisingly enough on what seems like an ordinary evening in the Jenkins-Laurence household. Tamara (Tara Westwood)— pony tailed, disarmingly severe and very pregnant— is preparing dinner in their Park Slope apartment. Her son Ben (Michelle David), small and bespectacled but bloated by assurances of his own exceptionalism, practices Vivaldi on the violin. His father Martin (Andrew Blair) arrives from work. The attitudes presented in this nightly routine alone are enough to serve as a blistering send-up of helicopter parenting, aggressive progressiveness, and New Age mumbo jumbo. David, bending her age and gender as Ben, perfectly captures the insufferable precociousness of the excessively nurtured. Westwood, meanwhile, is spot on as the self-righteous Tamara.

And then Tamara goes into labor. What emerges is a bouncing baby, uh, something. Sprouting increasingly lengthy and leafy branches where arms and legs should be and crowned by a Cabbage Patch Kid-style bonnet, baby Beatrice is a hilarious anomaly. The mystery surrounding her appearance and the determined nonchalance with which this "creative soul who marches to her own drummer" is accepted into the family is one of the most ridiculous and gracefully handled situations in the play.

If only the rest were as subversively subtle. Unlike some of the more exaggerated real-life residents of Park Slope who can't grasp their own inanity, the Jenkins-Laurence clan seems, more often than not, gleefully self-aware. The effect is something like spoiling the butt of one's own joke.

The introduction of Ben's teacher, Belinda (Marguerite Stimpson), into the action does little to correct this. She could have served as a much-needed "straight man" to contrast the over-the-top Jenkins-Laurences bit instead she becomes yet another cartoon character when she clumsily embarks on an affair with Martin. Stimpson does her best to sell the hapless and cloying character, but in a play otherwise grounded in specific cultural archetypes, Belinda seems out of place.

By the time the careful architecture holding together the buttoned-up Jenkins-Laurences has inevitably come crashing down, the play itself has veered off course. Whether it's a sex scene that begins with a dance to Mystikal's "Shake Ya Ass," or a fight scene rife with juvenile strikes to the groin, moments of sheer silliness effectively dismantle the power of the social critique at the heart of Branched.

Left to their own devices, the Jenkins-Laurences could have made the case for their own ridiculousness. It's disappointing and slightly ironic then that nature wasn't allowed to take its course.

Branched
Written by Erin Mallon
Directed by Robert Ross Parker
Cast: Andrew Blair (Martin), Michelle David (Ben), Marguerite Stimpson (Belinda), Tara Westwood (Tamara)
Set and Lighting Design: Nick Francone
Sound Design: Shane Rettig
Props Designers: Nick Francone & Dylan Luke
Production Manager/Technical Director: Dylan Luke
Production Stage Manager: Fran Rubenstein
Fight Choreographer: Alexis Black
Running Time: 90 minutes
HERE Arts Center, 145 Avenue of Americas, New York, NY 10001 here.org (212) 352-3101
Beginning 2/13/2014, closing 3/8/2014
Performance times: Monday & Thursday - Saturday at 8pm with an added performance Weds. March 5 at 8:30 p.m.
Ticket cost: $18
Reviewed by Jordan G. Teicher at 2/20/2014 performance.
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