If you want to watch the antics of a dysfunctional family, you can go visit certain of your relatives. You know the ones I mean.
Or, if you wish to heighten the experience, you can go to the Geffen Playhouse and watch four actors scream at each other for two hours.
The play is “Big Sky,” but it has nothing to do with Montana. Instead, it is set in a luxurious lodge in Aspen, Colorado, where a long-married couple, their 17-year-old daughter and a family friend have come for a brief vacation.
The mood is set at the very beginning when the couple is alone for a moment and the husband, Jack (Jon Tenney), attempts to embrace his wife. She squirms and rebuffs his advances. It’s an insidious pattern that they have apparently been repeating for quite some time. As Jack, in frustration, explains, “I put my hand on your breast and hope for the best.”
There is another reason that they are in Aspen, besides skiing. Jack, who has been out of work for five years, is going to meet with a prominent businessman who is about to offer him a job. He is elated, especially since he has been keeping from his wife the fact that he has been cashing in all their assets in order to keep the family afloat.
Meanwhile his wife, Jen (Jennifer Westfeldt), oblivious to their financial situation, had quit her job so that she could find something “ more useful” to do with her time. “We are in the waiting room of life,” she says. “We are born and then we die. What happens between should be meaningful.”
Very quickly she collected a full schedule of volunteer positions, including a shift at a local hospice, where she met and fell in love with a dying man. All this she confides to the family’s best friend, Jonathan (Arnie Burton), a gay man who had been Jack’s partner in a previous unsuccessful business venture. Jonathan is aghast to learn that Jen is in love with a man who is on the verge of death, but Jen quickly assures him that the man has made a remarkable recovery. Presumably in response to her loving attention.
At this point, an exuberant Jack bursts in to announce that he has been offered the job he was seeking, and all seems to be going well. But it isn’t really. As the play progresses, each member of the family reveals his flaws, and self-indulgence is a big one. Jen accuses Jack of not paying enough attention to their daughter Tessa (Emily Robinson), and she overcompensates by smothering the girl with unconditional approval.
Tessa, for her part, is in a nasty state of rebellion. She is planning to run away with a young native American whose tribal name means “Big Sky.” But before she can do that she gets involved in a series of events that leads, eventually, to the family’s downfall.
Unfortunately, the ensemble, spirited and well-cast though they may be, will challenge your patience as they loudly portray this playwright's version of a devastatingly dysfunctional family.
“Big Sky,” written by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros and directed by John Rando, is currently having its world premiere at The Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., in Westwood. Performances are Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. through July 17. For reservations, call the box office at (310) 208-5454 or visit geffenplayhouse.org.
