Landscape of the Body

The failure to achieve the American Dream has been the dominant theme of 20th-century theater in this country, and it’s fascinating to see how different playwrights, from Miller to Kushner, have tackled this monumental topic. John Guare’s 1977 work, Landscape of the Body, now being revived by the Signature Theatre Company, is a fascinating and flawed fantasia on the subject.

Full of flashbacks, non-linear digressions, and even vaudeville-like musical interludes, the play explores the unhappy fates of three members of a Maine family — Betty (Lili Taylor), her 14-year-old son Bert (Stephen Scott Scarpulla), and Betty’s sister Rosalie (Sherie Rene Scott) — who move to Greenwich Village in the 1970s. But for this unusual play to achieve its full effect, it needs a far more accomplished and far less diffuse staging than the one provided here by Michael Greif. (I didn’t see his previous production of the show two seasons ago at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which also starred Taylor and Scott.)

Rather than telling its story in a straightforward fashion, Landscape jumps around chronologically; Allen Moyer’s versatile set design, framed by hundreds of messages in bottles set on Lucite shelves, goes a long way toward helping achieve the many transitions. Guare’s biggest innovation is having the dead Rosalie act as the play’s narrator, sharing with the audience information that is unknown to the other characters and regularly breaking into song — accompanied by a four-piece onstage band — to comment on the action.

Unfortunately, as has been the case with so much of Greif’s work, the director fails to find a consistent tone for the diverse goings-on, and he lets too many scenes go slack when tension is absolutely required. He has also made the near-fatal mistake of misdirecting and/or miscasting Scarpulla and the three other young actors (Paul Iacono, Jill Shackner, and Colby Minfie) who are vital to the raggedy plot’s denouement. As a result, the quartet’s performances seem remarkably amateurish.

A meditation on loss, inspired by the infamous Alice Crimmins murder case, Landscape focuses in large part on whether or not it was Betty who killed and decapitated Bert. The pair came to New York from Maine two years earlier to persuade Rosalie to return home but, just minutes after their arrival in the Big Apple, Rosalie was run down and killed by a bicyclist. Betty decided to take over not just her sister’s Christopher Street apartment but also her life. This involves her working for and sleeping with Raulito (the excellent Bernard White), a Cuban-born con artist who pursues his own version of the American dream by running a fake travel agency that preys on excited brides-to-be.

Betty also follows in Rosalie’s footsteps by appearing in the occasional porn film — a fact that she tries to deny to Captain Marvin Holahan (Paul Sparks, in another indelible performance), the hard-as-nails cop who tries to break her story. While it’s plausible that Holahan would consider Betty the prime suspect in Bert’s murder, the audience is aware that the boy may have had real enemies because he had lured a slew of older men to the apartment on Christopher Street, where he and his friend Donny (Iacono) had beaten and robbed them.

During the play, Betty and Bert’s transformation from Maine bumpkins to hard-bitten city dwellers is almost complete, but their facades crumble when Betty travels to South Carolina with Durwood Peach (the fine Jonathan Fried), a former Good Humor man who has been obsessed with her for 20 years and has finally tracked her down. Desperate to finally find some security, Betty runs off with Durwood, well aware that eccentric is a kind way to describe him.

Scott, looking Marilyn Monroe-glamorous in a slit-to-there white dress designed by Miranda Hoffman, sings like a dream. But more important, she perfectly captures Rosalie’s slightly jaded innocence and zest for life. Still, despite Scott’s best efforts, there is something about Guare’s writing that never really allows this character to become much more than a plot device. Taylor, who’s always watchable on stage or screen, expertly communicates the character’s turmoil even in the few moments when it bubbles below the surface. As she struggles to regain her place in the world’s landscape after her son’s death, we long to hand her a map.