'Festen'

NEW YORK — The Broadway show "Festen" brings to mind a dinner party in a Noel Coward comedy setting gone horribly wrong.

This particular gathering is to celebrate the 60th birthday of Helge (Larry Bryggman), the patriarch a Danish family. Among those present are Else (Ali MacGraw), his loving wife of 39 years; eldest son Christian (Michael Hayden), a former a hell-raiser, but now quiet and subdued; and daughter Helene (Julianna Margulies), the family eccentric. There's also another son, Michael (Jeremy Sisto), a rather disagreeable sort, who shows up with his wife (Carrie Preston), whom he treats little better than a servant, and daughter (Ryan Simpkins) in tow. Also at the party are several older relatives, (John Carter, David Patrick Kelly), as well as Helmut (Christopher Evan Welch), a kind of adopted son who looks after the family's business interests. While this annual celebration seems poised to play out as it has so many times before with good food, good wine, friendly toasts and speeches, dirty jokes and a little drunken lechery, this year there's a tragedy hanging over the family—the recent suicide of another daughter, who was also Christian's twin sister.

Despite the tension in the air, not to mention Michael's frequent ill-mannered outbursts, everything seems to be going more or less smoothly until Christian calmly reveals a devastating family secret—one, he claims, caused sister to kill herself.

The validity of these accusations is not the main thrust of the play. Rather, it's how the family deals with the shattering news. Down the line, their collective instinct is to stick their head in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the elephant Christian has placed in the room, continuing the evening as if nothing had happened. Those who do have knowledge (or partial knowledge) of these events seek to keep it deeply buried; hoping the matter will just go away. (One person carries this to an absurd extreme by singing aloud trying to drown out what is being said.) Additional outbursts by Christian result in his being chased around the dinner table and elsewhere by Michael and Helmut, adding a kind of tragic/farcical element to the proceedings.

The play is both gripping and emotionally draining, thanks to a good script and some very fine acting among the cast. Hayden is excellent as a tormented soul (his stiffness in the beginning explained by the burden he carries), while Bryggman is wonderful as the genial host who is also a bastard of a father. MacGraw, in a rather small part, does a nice turn with her few speeches, which show that she's just as arrogant as her spouse. Sisto is also good as a verbally abusive husband and ignorant racist, (one of several present in the latter category) yet by the end he and the others have least learned something about responsibly and dealing with subjects they would rather ignore.

Perhaps most interesting about "Festen" is there are no big resolutions, no repentant confession and no fight to the death or plea for absolution, (a good choice on the author's part). What's presented instead are a series of incidents which force the acknowledgment of past events and the removal of at least one impetus to it happening again. But whether there will ever be complete closure for any of these people is open to question.

Also in the cast are Stephen Kunken, Diane Davis, Meredith Lipson, C.J. Wilson and Keith Davis.

Festen
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th Street
Tickets: $30.00-$95.00
Reservations: 212-239-6200 or www.telecharge.com
Running Time: 1 hour, fifty minutes

Judd Hollander is the New York correspondent for the London publication THE STAGE.