CHINESE FRIENDS
Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. (212) 279-4200.
A man’s estranged son, along with two college chums, drop in on the father, tie him up and make him answer for the political crimes he committed in his days of power.
This implausible and self-righteous scenario is the spine of Jon Robin Baitz’s new play, “Chinese Friends,” whose title alludes to a commercialized variant of the Chinese game of Go and has no political significance whatsoever.
The time is 2030 and Arthur Brice, a onetime liberal political hack, is living in posh but restless retirement on “a remote island somewhere in New England.” (Where would that be, pray? Somewhere in the Lake of Vermont?)
Whatever: One day in the midst of a rainstorm, Brice’s sullen son Ajax shows up at the door with his friends.
At first they seem like a bunch of dope-smoking, metrosexual hippies – giving Arthur plenty of fodder for his nasty cracks – but they turn out to have radical, revenge-driven agendas.
Soon they’re tying up Arthur and demanding answers.
Ajax demands the truth behind his mother’s suicide. Stephan wants to know what prompted his father’s conversion from Democratic policy-man to hippie guru. And Alegra wonders who’s responsible for the death of her father, a radical clergyman.
The play – mechanically directed by Robert Egan – seems to go on forever, as a glib man is forced to answer questions we don’t care about.
Peter Strauss is properly disdainful as Arthur, the father. Tyler Francavilla as Ajax, Will McCormack as the hothead Stephan and Bess Wohl as the preacher’s daughter Alegra slouch about in postures of angry contempt as they lecture Arthur and us endlessly.
Baitz is, in general, a thoughtful and skilled dramatist (“The Substance of Fire,” “Ten Unknowns”). Here he’s written a simple-minded and unconvincing sermon of a play.