“There is a woman in my life who really makes me happy,” says the nearly 60-year-old Aaron (Jordan Lage, left)—it’s his mama, Esther (Pamela Shaw).
Rarely does a play get off to such a torturous start for its audience like Art of Leaving. The first scene of Anne Marilyn Lucas’s feeble comedy is a portrait of emotional abuse played for laughs, and interrupted only by a tedious monologue about shopping for lunch. Humor in the rest of the play draws on such worn-out sources as Yiddishisms, stereotypes of feminists and Jewish mothers, and mishearing by old people.
Diana (Audrey Heffernan Meyer) is mother to Jason (Brian Mason) in Art of Leaving. Photographs by Jeremy Daniel.
Art of Leaving’s cast of characters comprises three couples in one family: Esther and Felix, pushing 80; Diana and Aaron, in their late 50s; and Caitlyn and Jason, twentysomethings. Aaron—Esther and Felix’s son—has fallen under the sway of “male dissatisfaction disorder” guru Dr. Stang, author of a book offering such dictums as “You are being emasculated in this feminist woke culture” and “Like all resolute virile pathfinders, you’re entitled to follow any direction in which your male sextant points true.”
Following Stang’s advice, Aaron decides to leave his marriage—“an unnatural relationship" that only benefits women, according to Stang—and to share his breakup plan with his parents and son, Jason (along with the son’s fiancée), before he springs it on Diana. This nonsensical premise is where Lucas chose to lay the foundation of her plot, despite the myriad other possible conflicts that could give rise to a debate about marriage, and despite a central character (Aaron, played by Jordan Lage) so relentlessly unpleasant, no one—on stage or in the audience—would think a marriage to him should be saved. Aaron insults his wife’s appearance, mocks her job, criticizes how she prepares meals and does laundry, and tells her, “I don’t want you to be happy.”
Felix (Alan Ceppos, right) imparts some grandfatherly and long-married wisdom to Caitlyn (Molly Chiffer).
Aaron’s divorce announcement leads to revelations by the other couples about their relationships, but they are poorly developed and inconsequential. Rather than engage with real cultural and economic shifts that have altered attitudes toward marriage, Lucas has crafted this purported look at “each generation's definition of what a marriage should be” out of broad and clichéd characterizations, MAGA-grade misogyny, a hint of sex farce and a complete disregard for how humans actually behave.
Diana (Audrey Heffernan Meyer), a curator at the Met, is smart, capable and content—which doesn’t jibe with her servility. The explanation is that Diana’s a people-pleaser who’s “done everything I can to make you happy” and “never would have left you, for any reason,” because she was so grateful someone wanted to marry her. “You live in such a different time for women,” she tells the younger folks about her alleged lack of options, as if her “time” were 75 years ago, not a mere 25.
Those are not the only things in the script that don’t track. A big one is Stang’s opposition to marriage, since keeping women married is inevitably a priority of male sexism (remember the “childless cat ladies” rant?). Diana felt she needed a husband for financial security because her mother “struggled” after her dad left them—yet she somehow inherited an Upper East Side apartment and a country house from that struggling mother.
And would someone in thrall to macho posturing take pride in a girlie activity like wedding planning? Aaron digresses from his lobbying for a divorce to fondly recount how he planned every aspect of his and Diana’s wedding. Even more ridiculous, he tells the story to his parents and wife, who were at the wedding, and his son, who probably would have already heard it.
For a single moment in the 90-minute play, Aaron (Lage, right) gives his wife, Diana (Heffernan Meyer), positive attention.
With Aaron practically a senior citizen, his mama issues and Esther’s coddling of her son are not amusing but embarrassing—and for ultimate cringe, they sing Fiddler on the Roof’s husband-and-wife duet “Do I Love You?” to each other. An hour or so after Aaron reveals his plan to divorce, Esther (Pamela Shaw) says, “You should’ve married a Jewish girl”—which seems like it would be an overbearing Jewish mother’s first reaction (or not at all, considering how often Esther says she loves her daughter-in-law).
As for Diana’s future daughter-in-law, Caitlyn (Molly Chiffer) is a feminist—so of course she is studying “critical identity: gender and sexuality” and expects her marriage to be polyamorous and pansexual. The other characters treat feminism like it’s a freakish, newfangled phenomenon, and director Matt Gehring somehow drew a line from the “rebellion” of feminism to outright rudeness, as he has Caitlyn repeatedly stand on the furniture in heavy-soled shoes.
Gehring’s direction also calls for actors to mime conversation while in the background or as scenes are beginning, which looks silly and amateurish. But even the sharpest direction couldn’t improve this script, as irredeemable as Aaron himself.
Art of Leaving runs through Dec. 14 at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 W. 42nd St.). Performances are 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with matinees 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit artofleavingtheplay.com.
Playwright: Anne Marilyn Lucas
Director: Matt Gehring
Sets: Frank J. Oliva
Costumes: Lara de Bruijn
Lighting: Stacey Boggs and Betsy Chester
Sound: Ben Vigus
