This blog began with food and only wandered into theater. Therefore, it's only proper that we begin the review of "Sight Unseen" at The New Jewish Theatre by pointing out that the main character in the play, Jonathan Waxman is not the trombonist who became one of the early and then leading chefs of the California Modern school of American food.
This Jonathan Waxman is a New Yorker, a Brooklyn boy who's become a successful artist. Aaron Orion Baker's Jonathan is polished, well-dressed and -coiffed, no flecks of paint lingering in the creases of his hands. He's in England for the opening of a retrospective of his work. His old girlfriend Patty, or Patricia as she's now called, married to an Englishman, lives west of London, and he's about to visit them. That's the pivot point in the play's timeline, which flashes both back and forward from the visit.
The visit was clearly his idea. Patty, played by Emily Baker, hasn't been back to the US in decades, apparently because of some vaguely-referred-to unpleasantness and married her husband to obtain UK resident status. Her husband, Nick, David Wassilak – is he shy, threatened, manipulative or what? They're struggling financially – he's a working anthropologist, she works on the dig, too, and, oh, here comes the well-off old boyffriend.
Jonathan's Jewish, Patty (as well as his wife) isn't, and his lineage even causes questions about his work when he's interviewed by an art journalist during his show in London. It takes us a while to realize that this woman (Em Piro), who begins by over-complimenting him and ends up playing gotcha in the interview, is German.
But the heart of the story is the relationship between Jonathan and Patty, an example of "Why can't he/she let go of this other person?" She is, by some standards, crazy, not understanding personal boundaries, perhaps setting the men against each other. Does Nick return to see if she's still pining for him? They didn't seem to part on good terms. Is this about ego or hormones or honest affection?
Strong work by all the cast, the two Bakers, wed in real life, showing the smooth and the prickly in painstaking fashion, Wassilak moving from quirky to revealing his hand as an evolving process, and Piro becoming the sort of woman you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night. (Or maybe you would.) Director Bobby Miller's gift for pacing is just what this play calls for.
An interesting piece of theater, not for those who are offended by sex, because there are clear references to it here, but a multilayered story deftly done.
Sight Unseen
through March 29
The New Jewish Theatre
Wool Studio Theater
2 Millstone Campus Drive