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The urge to kill
Bruce Graham’s ‘Any Given Monday’ in Wilmington
Steve Cohen
Driving on the expressway, haven’t you had moments when a reckless driver passes you on the right, then swerves into your lane and cuts you off, and you feel a desire to see his car totaled?
As the song says in Alan Menken & Howard Ashman’s The Little Shop of Horrors, do you “Know anyone who deserves to be cut up and fed to a hungry plant? Sure you do.”
Mickey, one of the main characters in Any Given Monday, feels that way, and he takes his anger to an extreme. The wife of his best friend, Lenny, has found a lover and moved out. Lenny reacts passively and pines for her return. Mickey must supply a much-needed response to this outrage.
But should he take out his anger against the woman whom Lenny still loves? Mickey has a better idea, and plots the cleverly reasoned murder of her lover.
Too passive
Mickey (superbly played by Michael Mastro) is brash and quick to act. His friend Lenny (the persuasive Kenny Morris) is gentle. Even Lenny’s daughter, a philosophy major (Lucy DeVito), finds her father too passive.
The production succeeds because the relationship between the two men seems so natural. Lenny is more intellectually accomplished (he’s a schoolteacher) but their attachment goes back to their childhood and is convincingly deep. The daughter is adorable, even when she over-analyzes whatever subject is at hand.
Only the wife is unappealing and bordering on unbelievable. Leslie Hendrix plays her like a hardened cheater, although the script says that this is her only infidelity in 24 years. To be sure, the protagonists and the playwright (not to mention this reviewer) are all male and thus tend to side with the husband; but the drama works best when we feel some sympathy for the wife and empathize with her refusal to let a marriage become merely a tired habit.
Greek tragedy
Playwright Graham cut about 12 minutes from his script after its Philadelphia premiere in 2010, and tightened the monologues. So this is not the same play that BSR’s Dan Rottenberg criticized then, and its new cast definitely gives it a warmer glow. Mickey, in particular, is less boorish, more reasoned.
Much of the discussion plays out against a background of a Cowboys-Giants football game on TV (hence the play’s title), with its glorification of aggression. I say “discussion” intentionally, because most of the play is commentary about actions that take place off stage. Thus the script, although funny, colloquial and contemporary, conjures the form of Greek tragedy.♦
To read Dan Rottenberg’s 2010 review of Any Given Monday, click here.
As the song says in Alan Menken & Howard Ashman’s The Little Shop of Horrors, do you “Know anyone who deserves to be cut up and fed to a hungry plant? Sure you do.”
Mickey, one of the main characters in Any Given Monday, feels that way, and he takes his anger to an extreme. The wife of his best friend, Lenny, has found a lover and moved out. Lenny reacts passively and pines for her return. Mickey must supply a much-needed response to this outrage.
But should he take out his anger against the woman whom Lenny still loves? Mickey has a better idea, and plots the cleverly reasoned murder of her lover.
Too passive
Mickey (superbly played by Michael Mastro) is brash and quick to act. His friend Lenny (the persuasive Kenny Morris) is gentle. Even Lenny’s daughter, a philosophy major (Lucy DeVito), finds her father too passive.
The production succeeds because the relationship between the two men seems so natural. Lenny is more intellectually accomplished (he’s a schoolteacher) but their attachment goes back to their childhood and is convincingly deep. The daughter is adorable, even when she over-analyzes whatever subject is at hand.
Only the wife is unappealing and bordering on unbelievable. Leslie Hendrix plays her like a hardened cheater, although the script says that this is her only infidelity in 24 years. To be sure, the protagonists and the playwright (not to mention this reviewer) are all male and thus tend to side with the husband; but the drama works best when we feel some sympathy for the wife and empathize with her refusal to let a marriage become merely a tired habit.
Greek tragedy
Playwright Graham cut about 12 minutes from his script after its Philadelphia premiere in 2010, and tightened the monologues. So this is not the same play that BSR’s Dan Rottenberg criticized then, and its new cast definitely gives it a warmer glow. Mickey, in particular, is less boorish, more reasoned.
Much of the discussion plays out against a background of a Cowboys-Giants football game on TV (hence the play’s title), with its glorification of aggression. I say “discussion” intentionally, because most of the play is commentary about actions that take place off stage. Thus the script, although funny, colloquial and contemporary, conjures the form of Greek tragedy.♦
To read Dan Rottenberg’s 2010 review of Any Given Monday, click here.
What, When, Where
Any Given Monday. By Bruce Graham; Bud Martin directed. Through September 22, 2013 at Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water St., Wilmington Del. (302) 594-1100. www.delawaretheatre.org.
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