Cancer, love and laughter make strange bedfellows at City Theatre production
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Unleash “Seinfeld” on a no-holds-barred cable network, where jokes about rape and vibrators set the tone in a cancer ward, and you have some idea of where the new play at City Theatre is headed.
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit” — stop for breath here — “at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York City” — phew — isn’t so much about bringing the funny as it is about two adult children treading in the sharkinfested emotions of parents grappling with cancer.
It’s what Karla and Don have in common — seemingly the only thing — when they first clash in their mothers’ shared hospital room.
Karla (Jenni Putney), a struggling stand-up comic whose potty mouth might make Sarah Silverman blush, is by the bedside of her mother, who only recently has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Don (Tim McGeever), a schlub who is actually a tech millionaire, has been watching his mother’s struggles for seven years and now is dealing with a broken marriage and a druggy son.
Both are on the edge, and both annoy the heck out of each other — Karla, with her nonstop obscenities and quick judgments; and Don, who just wants to wallow in his own misery.
On Karla’s side of the hospital room curtain, we find Helena Ruoti, who even from a hospital bed is a force of nature as Karla’s mother, Marcie. Whether she is snoring on cue or trading obscenities with her daughter, Ms. Ruoti bounces along a roulette wheel of resentment, sarcasm and fear. As Don’s mother, Kendra McLaughlin is seemingly comatose, but her presence is felt throughout.
For the many people who will come to Halley Feiffer’s play having been a caretaker or a cancer patient, the play will strike a chord when it deals with feelingsof helplessness and loss. The spot-on set by Tony Ferrieri and appropriately harsh light by Andrew David Ostrowski are visual touchstones for anyone who has spent time in a hospital room.
It’s not a place that screams “romance,” but that’s where Karla and Don are headed. That is never in doubt, from the moment Don walks quietly into the room and hears Karla practicing her vulgar stand-up “bits” from the other side of the curtain.
Their relationship grows through a series of absurd and everyday encounters. She throws water in his face and pulls down his baggy, stained sweatpants, and she also comes to expect that he will get her coffee. He mostly looks at her as if she is an alien, then opens up to her like a man who has not spoken in years.
Ms. Putney’s Karla and Mr. McGeever’s Don have the most chemistry when they are on each other’s nerves, or when she shocks him, which is most of the time. His expression likely mirrors ours when she tells him that she and her mother, a social worker, share an obsession for watching a fictional “Law & Order” sex crimes show about pedophiles.
Not unexpectedly, their characters give in to their longings — his for an attractive younger woman who goes through life like a raw nerve ending; hers for a connection with someone who may just understand her inner turmoil.
Their sex scene is as awkward as anything “Seinfeld” might have cooked up, except more explicit and with their mothers are present. Oh, wait. George Costanza did have a, well, moment in his mother’s hospital room.
With the “Funny Thing” play (not to be confused in any way with the Sondheim musical), actress and playwright Ms. Feiffer has brought love and fear and farce and a barrage of fbombs into the cancer unit.
The play, at nearly 90 minutes without intermission, has been a popular regional pickup since its offBroadway debut last year. It just finished a Chicago run, and Ms. Feiffer is starring as Karla in Los Angeles’ Geffen Playhouse. In the production directed by City newcomer Joshua Kahan Brody, much of the comedy succeeds in its apparent mission to shock and at times be distasteful — not unlike the situation that Karla, Don and their mothers find themselves in.
It’s a funny thing about this play with the ridiculously long title. The desire to cope and connect finds it way through the crazy, and that is the most satisfying thing about it.