Reviews

Genius

MacArthur Grants dominate a dinner party in playwright Kate Walbert’s world-premiere play.

Robert Breuler and Liz Zweifler in Kate Walbert's Genius, directed by Darrell W. Cox, at Profiles Theatre.
Robert Breuler and Liz Zweifler in Kate Walbert's Genius, directed by Darrell W. Cox, at Profiles Theatre.
(© Michael Brosilow)

In its world premiere of Genius, Profiles Theatre has given novelist Kate Walbert her first shot at the stage.

However, Walbert's portrait of four intellectuals contains little worth recommending. Directed by Darrell W. Cox, the piece also feels tentative — to the point where necessities like line memorization don't yet seem completely under the cast's control.

For a quartet of self-described intellects and artists, Walbert's characters seem neither terribly bright nor especially artistic. Their conversations are more prone to name-dropping various poets, writers, and artists than they are to talking about anything of substance.

Walbert opens with Sara (Liz Zweifler), a well-established writer in her 50s, and her husband of many years, Joel (Robert Breuler), a professor. He's in trouble for sexting a younger woman at his workplace and is in danger of losing his position. Sara is remarkably sanguine about the graphic photos that have become public. What she is worked up about is the fact that she's been asked to submit a nomination to the MacArthur Grant committee, bestowers of the famed grant that awards millions every year to artists. Their friends, the very pregnant Charlotte (Stephanie Chavara) and Peter (Cale Haupert), a young filmmaking husband-and-wife team, are going to Cannes with their latest project. But before they go, they're hosting Sara and Joel for dinner. (How they know Sara and Joel is never quite clear.)

The barely-there plot involves whether Sara will nominate Charlotte or Peter for the MacArthur. Never mind that the nomination is just the first step in a long, exhaustive process. To hear Sara, Joel, Charlotte, and Peter talk about it, whoever gets Sara's vote is a shoo-in for the prize. While the reality of the process is far from that, Walbert uses this to artificially raise the dramatic stakes of the play.

Sadly, it's tough to care whom Sara will pick, as neither Peter nor Charlotte say or do anything to make you believe they'd be in the running in the first place. Where the story also hits a wall is, unfortunately, at its heart, with the characters. Charlotte, Peter, Sara, and Joel's discussions aren't particularly profound or ingenious. Rather than discuss their work with keen insight, they only mention their accomplishments and name-drop obscure poets.

Walbert takes a nonlinear approach to the drama, skipping back and forth in time on the night of the dinner party as a series of primarily two-person scenes play out, with the two "offstage" people sitting in a dimly lit corner of the tiny stage. Neither the unconventional time structure nor the device of keeping people onstage even when they're not in the scene enhances the work.

The line between the underdeveloped story and the acting is a blurry one, entwining both tightly together in this piece and making it difficult to separate one from the other. While Profiles as a group has a long, vivid history of producing enthralling, edge-of-your-seat dramas, unfortunately, Genius does not live up to its name.

Featured In This Story

Genius

Closed: May 3, 2015