Tender Drama At Gloucester Stage Highlights American Dream

Tender is a compelling two-act drama, filled with insights, laughs and painful choices for a once-thriving middle-class family facing the nightmares of the American recession instead of their once-gilded American Dream in Southern California. Living it, with a big house, private school for 11-year old daughter, Lexi, Brian, his overworked, frantic wife, Amanda, and her vitriolic dad, Frank. Financial devastation due to a failed economy – Brian lost his job, realator Amanda can’t sell a house -- father, Frank, slowly fading into dementia, has a financial secret.
Faced with financial ruin, a foreclosure, loss of “pride,” and a feeling of shame, the family rebalances, writes off its debts and recalibrates its American Dream, and heads for the Open Road. Hoping to find something.

In this world premiere of his new play, playwright Kelly Younger delivers a way out of a family’s shattered suburban dream. Walls come tumbling down, figuratively and literally, after Frank accidentally backs up a “borrowed” Winnebago RV into the living room. Boom. House, dreams, and a valiant attempt to keep the dream alive came to an end as the family slowly takes a new path to a new beginning.

The compelling, realistic portrayal of a family facing bankruptcy that forces them to abandon their once-stable lives, to start over. But where? As they plan to leave Southern California. Like a 1930s Dust Bowl family, they were also devastated by the drought in their well-educated, lush suburban lives, and finally pack it in, heading out for a new start in California.

Amanda (performed, nay, inhabited by the amazing Denise Cormier) struggles to close a real estate sale, to then refinance and save their home from foreclosure. A hard worker, she’s disillusioned and angry as hell. As his wife works long hours, Her out-of-work husband, Brian (played by the able Brendan Powers), runs the house and takes care of his daughter. He is taunted mercilessly by vitriolic father-in-law, Frank, (played with depth and humor by Richard McElvain) who lives with them. Frank is a pain, occasionally joining in or starting heated arguments, sometimes throwing out his zingers. Frank’s a know-it-all, sarcastic and mean spirited. He’d cared for himself and Amanda since his wife and her mother left them. “You owe me,” he states, over and over, in a mean little guilt trip. The little post-it notes plastered on the dining room walls, we learn late in the play, are actually I.O.U.s Frank has put there: “Lexi, you owe me for 45 minutes of tutoring” and the like.

But Frank is a dreamer, too, and convinces his family to take to the open road, to see America, in the Winnebago he parked in their front yard. To relive his past drive up the Pacific Coast to tour William Randolph Hearst’s castle in San Simeon. Frank also longs for freedom from his mindless job as a truck driver driving a car nicknamed a “yard goat’’ that moves trailers around a warehouse yard. Never driving on the open road. Pent up.

“When I was in Hearst’s Castle with your mother, the tour guide showed us “Forty-one fireplaces!’’ he keeps exclaiming, and a magnificent pool. Frank is a shrill, false conscience, insisting the bankrupt family “owe” him. The I.O.U.s came due and can’t be paid. But ultimately, that dream – and burden -- must be released let go, and a new reality faced in order for Amanda, Brian, Frank, and US to move on. Amanda, the sole support of the family, has been desperately clinging to the dream, to the house, to “respectability.” She won’t let it go. One dramatic, painful theme in the play is her last ditch chance to sell a property, and refinance the house and avoid foreclosure.

SO when the Winnebago, driven by not-quite-together Frank into the living room, explodes into the living room at the end of ACT I, and the walls come tumbling down, liberation pierces their home. And sets them all free to make difficult choices. To face the new reality, try to build a new life. Outside of their “secure” home, community, schools, suburban life.

He felt trapped in his life as Amanda and Brian now feel trapped in theirs. “You owe me,’’ he tells Amanda repeatedly. The walls of the house are bedecked with IOU’s Frank has written to remind the others of their obligation to him for every gesture, no matter how small. Finally, the bills came due, for him, too, as he faces a new future. Apart from his family.

Seamlessly directed by Eric C. Engel, the drama slowly enfolded me in its world, leaving me sad, sympathetic and worried at the end of the play. Worried about the couple’s uncertain future, but hoping they’d make another stand.

Nice sets, by Julia Noulin-Merat, hinted at the lost wealth of a couple that've been selling possessions on e-bay and yard sales. Costumes, Molly Trainer. Lights, by Russ Swift, added a nice touch with the transparent “walls” to the kitchen and living room.
At Gloucester Stage Company, 267 East Main St., Gloucester, MA. Through July 25. Tickets $37 ($32 for students and senior citizens). 978-281-4433. www.gloucesterstage.org

Next play at the Gloucester Stage is Trying, By Joanna McClelland Glass, winner of the prestigious Jefferson Award for Best New Play, 2004. Directed by Eric C. Engel and featuring Richard Mawe and Becky Webber, it is a cross-generational tour de force ensues when Sarah, a young secretary from the Canadian prairie, fi nds herself working for the aging Francis Biddle, Attorney General during World War II and the primary American judge on the postwar Nuremberg Trials. This intimate and inspiring story, based on the playwright’s own experience, has been acclaimed by audiences and critics in the United States and Canada. • The show runs from July 29 to August 8.