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On an Average Day
It’s near-impossible to avoid invoking Sam Shepard when considering Kolvenbach’s True West–ern. By reuniting estranged adult brothers in the family kitchen, one seemingly straitlaced, the other a bit unhinged, Kolvenbach’s 2002 play seems to invite the reference.
The kitchen here, unlike Shepard’s, belongs not to the boys’ mother but to their father, who abandoned them as children, leaving teenaged Jack to care for wee Robert. (Mom, or moms, go oddly unmentioned.) The opening has Jack returning many years later to find Bob living in filth, the decrepit house strewn with newspapers, empty beers and SpaghettiO’s cans. Bob, whose connection to reality appears tenuous at best, mentions almost casually that he may currently be on trial. To say much more would give away the rather hard-to-swallow twists on which Average Day relies.
Despite the writerly contrivances—and Kolvenbach’s plot-level indulgences are somewhat leavened by his incisive skill with dialogue—it’s easy to see why actors would want to sink their teeth into this chewy setup. Bozzuto (in the showier turn as the sociopath) and Huysman (whose underwritten role requires more invention on his part) do the play better justice than it probably deserves. Under Reeder’s tightly paced direction (and on Heath Hays’s masterfully mangy set), these terrifically compelling performers manage to convince us that the most extreme, unnatural behavior makes instinctual sense. And hey, what do you know, there’s that Shepard echo again.
