The_Doge's Reviews - Men on the TakeThe_Doge's Reviews - Men on the TakeCarter Lewis' Men on the Take is a follow up and companion piece to his Women Who Steal from last season and was, according to the author, inspired by the conversations among male and female actors on the subject of how men and women communicate ‚ or don't. The press release for Men on the Take promises an "honest, deeply humorous look into the minds and motivations of men" and it mostly delivers on that promise. Lewis knows how to get laughter out of the kind of pain that anyone who has been ejected from a relationship will understand, and out of the ways in which men and women talk past each other. What the play doesn't deliver, unfortunately, is a central character with any emotional depth or any especially novel or profound insights into the male mind.
The shallow central character is the "fortysomething" George. His wife, Evelyn, has thrown him out and he is now reduced to watching his former home through binoculars from the coffee shop across the street and obsessing about the changes Evelyn is making in it and in her life. Enter Dr. Jake Mack, psychiatrist and (as we discover later) therapist to Evelyn for the last two years. For reasons which are too complicated to deal with in a review of this length, Jake wants to get George and Evelyn back together again, and is convinced that he must do it in one night, before Jake goes under the knife for prostate surgery.
The ensuing wild ride through Cleveland includes encounters with Jake's on-again, off-again wife (they've been married fourteen times and divorced fifteen ‚ so far), an attempted burglary of George's ex-house, an over-long and largely irrelevant scene at a Cavaliers basketball game, a realistic (and therefore foolish) fist fight, and a LOT of alcohol. The play moves through multiple scenes in a disjointed and not always coherent fashion ‚ the basketball game, in particular, seems to come out of nowhere ‚ and I was frequently left with the feeling that the really important things were happening off stage. This is especially true of the final scenes, in which the dialogue indicates that George has somehow grown emotionally, even though we have seen no evidence of it on stage up to that point.
If I have misgivings about the script, however, I have none about this cast. Steven Hauck gets the most out of George, making this self-involved and clueless character more interesting than he may deserve to be. Robert Sinclair's Jake is appropriately less flashy, but nicely shaded, bringing out the many facets of what is clearly the better-developed character. Jenna Cole has the challenging task of being both wives as well as a cop and a coffee-shop waitress trapped by the tirelessly expounding George. Her range is impressive as she nails each character with little more than a change of costume and body language.
Designer Scott Neale deals cleverly with Lewis' multiple scene changes (why does everybody seem to be writing for television these days?) by placing a collection of small set pieces behind a scrim and then illuminating each one to indicate the location ‚ a Guinness sign for the bar, an oversized speedometer for the truck, a Cavaliers logo for the game and so on. And Skip Greer's direction is crisp and clear.
When all is said and done, however, I'm not sure that Men on the Take is worth your time. The script has nothing new or insightful to say about male-female communication and George's endless, self-serving blather finally reminded me that, in the words of Tom Lehrer, "if people can't communicate, I think the least they can do is shut up." The show continues through April 14th; call 314-968-4925 for ticket information.