Delaware Theatre Company presents 'The City of Conversation'

Talk comes with the territory, of course, as society woman Hester Ferris (Susan Wilder) has long hosted parties in a time-honored politicking tradition among the rich and powerful. "They're an arm of the government," she says of her soirees. Her Georgetown home, designed by James Dardenne, is decorated with pictures of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and other liberal icons. "Dinner," she admits, "is always about something."

Her son Colin (Jered McLenigan) returns from the London School of Economics with long hair and big sideburns, plus fiancée Anna (Jessica Bedford), a Minnesotan wary of Washington politics and enamored of the "new energy" of a presidential candidate named Reagan. Young, blonde, and bold, Anna inserts herself into one of Hester's dinners, ignoring the directive that she be "decorative and gentle." While Hester skewers a Kentucky senator's unsophisticated spouse (Drucie McDaniel), Anna sips brandy and smoke cigars with two powerful senators (Dan Kern, Buck Schirner), flirting herself into a meeting invitation.

Politics is personal

Hester's been outplayed by the newcomer, and even eight years later, sparks fly between them. Giardina does a lot of catching up in the first of two second-act scenes, introducing Anna and Colin's six-year-old son Ethan (Ethan Wagner). Hester can't work her new VCR, but Ethan can. Sound designer John Stovicek provides audio news clips that remind us of key events (though younger audience members will need to consult their programs for the timeline), and Millie Hiibel's costumes define each decade.

While act 1's dinner topic was a judicial nomination's membership in an all-white country club, the debate in act 2, scene 1 concerns Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's suitability. (Ahh, the good ol' days, when senators would actually consider a president's nominees.) The echoes of today's politics are often humorous: Anna asks, "Have our skins grown so thin?" To which I wanted to shout, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Ethan, like Bork, becomes a political football between his parents and grandmother, and the mix of political disagreement and personal animosity results in an ugly showdown.

Another leap ahead

Act 2's second scene jumps to January 2009, and after Stovicek again summarizes national events, the playwright packs two decades's exposition into a scene in which Ethan, now played by McLenigan, is 27 and visiting his grandmother for the first time in over 20 years with his partner Donald, played by Brandon J. Pierce. The senator, played by Dan Kern, who was Hester's long-term lover, doesn't appear and isn't mentioned; Ethan's parents are referenced briefly. Hester's sister Jean (Laural Merlington), has a little influence.

While the first hour and a half of The City of Conversation builds the Hester-Anna clash and all it represents, its final scene continues on that trajectory, but without Anna it stalls. The underdeveloped Hester-Colin relationship evaporates too. Some changes are predictable, even tidy. Ethan is openly gay and contemplating marriage, which we know will soon be legal, and to a black man, no less. But Giardina's tangled conflicts and themes are left behind.

Strong performances, particularly by Wilder (whose Hester gets all the best lines), can't make these conversations into a cohesive, let alone enjoyable, play. If the whole city functions like this, no wonder so many people distrust Washington, DC.