In his new play, “The Lyons,” Nicky Silver pulls off a neat trick: He’s written a comedy fueled almost exclusively by letdowns. An old married couple endures despite decades of encrusted resentments. Their children snitch on each other. Even a sofa’s color is described as “some washed-out shade of dashed hopes.”
It helps considerably that Silver (“Pterodactyls,” “Raised in Captivity”) has written his best dialogue in ages, and that it’s the expert Linda Lavin who’s ragging about her old couch.
Playing Rita, the matriarch of the Lyons family, she’s like a virtuoso marksman, hitting her target every single time. But there are fracture lines under Rita’s assured exterior, and a hunger for a better life — Lavin suggests it all with great finesse.
Rita has some time on her hands, waiting in a hospital room for her husband, Ben (Dick Latessa), to die of cancer. Stuck in bed, the grumpy old man growls, hurls curses and insults, while Rita flips through magazines, wondering out loud how she’s going to redecorate her much-loathed home after he’s gone.
Until now, the finality of Ben’s illness has been kept a secret from the couple’s 30-something children. Lisa (Kate Jennings Grant) is a divorced mom in AA; Curtis (Michael Esper) is a brittle writer. The latter’s homosexuality is a pointy thorn in Ben’s side.
“My life is one long parade of disappointment,” he tells his son. “And you’re the grand-f – – king marshal.”
What could have been a grim show peopled with bitter sad sacks turns out to be very funny — and surprisingly affecting. Silver fires an arsenal of quips, but he also steers the plot in an unexpectedly hopeful direction. Director Mark Brokaw and the crackerjack cast smoothly hug every twist and turn of the winding emotional road.
In the second act, the focus is on Curtis, whose neuroses are exposed in full during an apartment visit with a hunky real-estate agent (Gregory Wooddell). Let’s just say that the young Lyons learns that karma has a way of biting you in the butt. Another trip to the hospital brings more revelations, this time having to do with Rita.
“The Lyons” pokes fun at childish adults and the floundering parents who helped make them that way, but it’s also kind to the sadness brought on by missed opportunities. And it ends on a compassionate note, telling us, with sharp verve and genuine affection, that it’s never too late to live.