Only those with a high tolerance for whimsy should venture near “The Hatmaker’s Wife.” We’re talking superhuman, Justice League of America-level resistance here. Lauren Yee’s new play is so sweetly twee that it goes down like a cocktail of syrup, jam and molasses.
Cutesy-grumpy older people with vaguely Eastern European accents: check.
Friendly neighbor in full Boca Raton-wear and a wife “long dead of seagull attack”: check.
Baby floating up attached to balloons: check.
A talking wall prone to philosophizing and self-aggrandizement — “I am wall of truth. Which make me so awesome.” If only we could punch it.
An unnamed young copy editor (Stephanie Wright Thompson) and her boyfriend, Gabe (Frank Harts), move into an old house in the suburbs. Soon the house starts spitting out sheets of paper telling the story of the previous occupants, said cutesy-grumpy hatmaker (David Margulies) and his wife (Marcia Jean Kurtz).
Our heroine doesn’t mention the chatty wall to Gabe, probably because he doesn’t hear it — yet he does see the papers, so what gives?
Anyway, she keeps reading and talking to the wall (voiced by Megan Byrne), and we keep being subjected to flashbacks of the hatmaker being a jerk to his wife, who takes off with his favorite fedora. A kindly neighbor named Meckel (Peter Friedman, late of “Circle Mirror Transformation”) tries to help him get them back.
Director Rachel Chavkin (“Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812”) has a feel for the fanciful, and here she comes up with some striking visuals — including one that seems to evoke a Magritte painting. Chavkin gets big support from Ryan Rumery’s evocative score and sound design. Kurtz is also heartbreaking as a woman stuck in a grim marriage to a man who can’t even remember her name (“Has been long time since I call to her,” he tells Meckel).
That’s just not enough to save the show. By the time a golem acting suspiciously like the monster in “Young Frankenstein” shows up, you’ll be begging for insulin.