Beth Henley’s “Family Week” is only 75 minutes long, but it’s loaded with mysteries. For starters, why did renowned film director Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”) choose this play for his stage debut? Perhaps he felt the 2000 piece had gotten short shrift when it premiered, and decided he could reveal the treasure buried within.
It’s hard to think anybody could inject any life into “Family Week,” or even make heads or tails of it. The “Crimes of the Heart” playwright has channeled some of her trademark issues — notably the way generations of related women cope with dysfunction — into a series of head-scratching scenes that don’t coalesce into anything of interest.
Demme’s greatest asset is his adroit cast, led by Kathleen Chalfant, regal as always, and Rosemarie DeWitt.
DeWitt, who played the title character in the director’s movie “Rachel Getting Married,” brings a vulnerable, touching gravity to Claire, a woman trying to overcome an emotional meltdown at a treatment center in the Southwestern desert. Her portrayal is even more impressive considering how little she’s given to work with.
Having Claire’s mother (Chalfant), sister (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) and daughter (Sami Gayle) participate in therapy sessions during the center’s Family Week doesn’t seem to help the patient. It’s not doing much for the audience, either.
To her credit, Henley avoids splashy 11th-hour reveals, but she still needs to give us something about what makes these people tick. Instead, she relies on self-help mumbo-jumbo, cutesy tricks (the actresses take turns playing a group-therapy leader called Sandra) and a vagueness that’s more frustrating than tantalizing.
Under the carefree demeanor of Claire’s sister Rickey lurks an early trauma. It’s an intriguing, if clichéd, angle, but the show doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, we’re distracted by the fact that Claire is white and Rickey is black. Whether this is just blind casting or actually suggests something about their relationship is never made clear.
Toward the end, the show acquires a certain surreal melancholia, and Demme finds just the right tone for it. It almost makes things worse, as it suggests the true scope of this missed opportunity.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com