On an Average Day

Kolvenbach’s look at fraternal dysfunction reunites a pair of siblings in the house where their father abandoned them years before as children. Robert is obviously damaged, perhaps mentally ill; older brother Jack, superficially saner, is crumbling inside. That’s about all we can tell you without compromising the three or four secrets this play hopes to spring on you. But in a nutshell, while intermittently convincing in its characterizations, the story is a deadly combination of predictable and implausible, steeped in a weirdly anachronistic sort of paternal disappointment that’s straight out of Arthur Miller.

Director Klier brings some solid atmospherics, in particular Ned Mochel’s tooth-loosening stage combat and Danny Cistone’s marvelously decrepit scenic design. (His judgment on a couple of payoff-underlining sound cues is more questionable.) Dodging the worst of the melodrama with a counterintuitively downplayed performance, Clark mostly sells the better-crafted if hard-to-buy role of Robert; Tovar flexes more muscle groups as Jack but doesn’t have all the answers for a character who’s just problematic as written. Both are challenged by Kolvenbach’s pacing, generally too deliberate or too abrupt, but they make enough of the moments they’re given to render this surprisingly watchable oddball fare.