The tiny Bank Street Theatre is a freakishly appropriate place to watch the excellent new dark comedy “The Atmosphere of Memory.” There’s no stage to speak of; if you’re sitting in the first row, nearly brushing against actors, you might as well be in the show.
This couldn’t be any more perfect for David Bar Katz’s new piece, which is all about the uncomfortable, often exploitative merging of life and art.
Not only is Jon (Max Casella) writing a play that’s transparently about his own family, but his stage mom is interpreted by his real-life famous actress of a mother, Claire (Ellen Burstyn).
It gets thornier.
As a child, Jon taped his family’s conversations and transcribed them in dozens of composition books, which he’s now using as source material for “Blow Out Your Candles, Laura” — the Tennessee Williams-like title of his avowed memory play.
But a closer look at the transcripts reveals that it’s not just memory that’s unreliable.
The show, directed by Pam MacKinnon, gets off to a herky-jerky start, playing more like vintage Woody Allen than Allen’s own contribution to Broadway’s “Relatively Speaking.” The impression is reinforced by the fact that Casella and David Deblinger — as Steve, the actor playing Jon’s alter ego in “Candles” — recall the young Woody.
Just as you settle in for a mildly amusing evening of theatrical private jokes, in storms Jon’s father, Murray (John Glover) — and “Atmosphere” gets a high-voltage jump-start.
Murray “is like something Greek gods banish,” according to Steve, and Glover delivers a fittingly outsize performance. Looking like a modern gunslinger, his Murray is a free-spirited — bordering on amoral — imp who’s dropped by to mess with everybody’s heads. And he loves it.
Things get both darker and funnier with him around, and soon the borders between life and make-believe crumble even further. In a hilarious scene, the reunited family reads out loud from the notebooks, reenacting scenes they had lived decades earlier.
The second act spins in so many directions that it threatens to escape from the playwright’s control — there are so many balls in the air that some get dropped. Did I mention songs? Yes, there are songs, too. Some suggest Jon’s play needs trimming, and the same can be said for this.
But there’s also enough withering insights into the neediness and narcissistic selfishness of artists to make this “Memory” lane one worth strolling down.