Roscoe (Gary Cole) rages in the background as Sam Shepard’s new play about a crazy family (photo by Joan Marcus)
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through September 30, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
In 1996-97, Sam Shepard was the playwright-in-residence at the Signature Theatre, presenting Curse of the Starving Class, Chicago, Tooth of Crime (Second Dance), and The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife. He is now making his debut at the new Pershing Square Signature Center on West 42nd St. with the new play Heartless, which has been extended at the Irene Diamond Stage through the end of September. Developed specifically for the space, Heartless takes place in a Los Angeles house overlooking the San Fernando Valley, where the extremely cynical Sally (Julianne Nicholson), who has a frightening scar running down the length of her torso, has brought home Roscoe (Gary Cole, who is too young for the role), a professor more than twice her age who has just left his wife. Roscoe soon meets the rest of Sally’s crazy family, including sister Lucy (Jenny Bacon), a dour spinster who carries in a serving platter of meds for Sally as if it were breakfast, and mother Mable Murphy (Lois Smith), a wheelchair-bound old woman who says exactly what’s on her mind, no matter who it might hurt. Mable is cared for by nurse Elizabeth (Betty Gilpin), a beautiful young woman who rarely, if ever, speaks. From the start, it’s hard to get a footing on the story; in the first act, the unlikable nature of most of the characters rises quickly to the surface, although Lucy’s wry sense of humor and Mable’s ranting soliloquies eventually rescue the play from the confounding mix of reality and surrealism that hampers the second act. Heartless is a rare Shepard work with more female than male characters, with the sole male, Roscoe, seeming lost much of the time, merely a prop to engage the stronger, more powerful women. Much of Heartless actually lacks heart, which might relate to the plot but causes an uncomfortable distance between the audience and what’s happening onstage. The stand-out is Smith, trapped in a wheelchair but able to rage like a tornado, including one speech in which Mable mentions watching the movie East of Eden, a film that Smith actually appeared in, something that Shepard has said was just a coincidence.