Lydia Diamond’s ‘Stick Fly’ at the Arden

One of the fascinations of August was that it was set in Oklahoma, where East Coast audiences didn’t expect to find intellectuals. Similarly, both the white and the black people in Stick Fly’s audience are pleasantly surprised to discover the erudition within this family.

The patriarch, Joe LeVay, is a neurosurgeon married to an heiress (who never appears). They live in a large home in the nicest part of Martha’s Vineyard. Both their sons bring their girlfriends to meet the parents.

The younger son, Spoon (Biko Eisen-Martin) is about to get his first novel published, which doesn’t please his father, who put Spoon through law school and business school, not to mention a master’s degree in sociology. And, we later discover, Dad made other payments as well. Spoon’s fiancée is Taylor (Jessica Frances Dukes), a graduate student in entomology who studies flies by putting them on a stick. She’s the daughter of a famous black intellectual, but she grew up with less money and status than the LeVays, and she’s not good at hiding her resentment.

Annoying flaws

The older son, Flip (U.R.), is a plastic surgeon and is his father’s favorite. The woman he brings home is the white Kimber (Julianna Zinkel) from Kennebunkport, who proudly notes that she has studied “race dynamics in inner-city schools.”

How it feels to belong, or be excluded, because of your race or class is fascinating grist for a drama. Any young woman would feel nervous about being introduced to her boyfriend’s family, but any girlfriend or fiancée coming into this home would also be intimidated by all that accomplishment, all that wealth, all that intelligence. Taylor reacts with anger; Kimber seems not only unimpressed but smugly unaware.

This is a play you want to praise for its original situations, yet annoying flaws keep getting in the way. A key development is implausibly revealed by an unheard voice on the other end of a phone conversation. Coincidences and predictable plot twists pile up. Lame jokes mar the dialogue. ("I'm going to be frank with you." "Frank? I thought you said to call you Flip.")

Passing fling?

We are told, at the end, that Kimber’s love for Flip is the best thing that ever happened to him, and one cast member remarks that Flip may not deserve someone as wonderful as she. But the script provides little indication of what’s appealing about either of them, other than that she’s smart and he’s rich. And the alleged romance of Kimber and Flip comes across as more like a passing fling.

The most appealing character is the daughter of the family’s maid, Cheryl (a nicely nuanced performance by Joniece Abbott-Pratt), who must endure life among condescending members of a higher social and economic class.

David Gordon, who designed a marvelously detailed and imposing set, and Walter Dallas, for the naturalistic choreography of his direction, deserve equal or higher billing with the actors onstage.