The new drama “Regrets,” set in 1954 Nevada, looks quite nice: Small wood cabins are huddled onstage, with the desert sky in the back and a cooking fire in the center. You can almost smell the mesquite.
At least Rachel Hauck’s detailed scenic design gives us something to daydream about — a weekend there would be fun — because little else commands attention. Like “We Live Here” and “Close Up Space,” the last two shows at Manhattan Theatre Club’s off-Broadway venue, Matt Charman’s “Regrets” is a half-baked play in an attractive package.
MTC is touting Charman as “Britain’s fastest-rising young playwright.” I’d hate to see the competition.
It’s not that “Regrets” is inept or idiotic. It’s semi-competent and the well-meaning Charman addresses hot-button issues like communism, race relations and male bonding.
The aforementioned cabins are rented by stock characters waiting for their divorces in nearby Reno. You’ve got your dweeby New Yorker (Richard Topol), your blowhard (Lucas Caleb Rooney) and your haunted vet (Brian Hutchison) with a limp — tragic backstory alert!
Along comes the mysterious Caleb (Ansel Elgort, a tween idol in the making), flouting sexy lips and a taste for poetry. Why does he want a divorce at the ripe young age of 18? Could he have . . . a secret?
He does, but it doesn’t matter — the only person with real stakes is Caleb’s wife, and we don’t even get to see her.
Rounding out the leads are Alexis Bledel (TV’s “Gilmore Girls”) as a local prostitute and the excellent Adriane Lenox (“Doubt”), who’s criminally underused as the cabins’ owner. She’s the only one who makes her character more than a mere paper doll, no thanks to Charman or director Carolyn Cantor, who can’t even convincingly stage the tussles that tend to break out among idle men.
“Regrets” isn’t so much a disappointing show as an unnecessary one: There’s no urgency or passion in this theater by committee — it’s lifeless and safe.
MTC needs to correct its course, stat, otherwise the company’s subscribers may claim grounds for separation.