Nicky Silver's 'Too Much Sun' by Isis Productions

This, Silver's most recent play (2014), pales in comparison with works such as The Food Chain, Fat Men in Skirts, and Raised in Captivity. His best plays are acerbic farces, in which tragedy makes us laugh despite ourselves.

Too Much Sun wallows in the dark, minus that zany edge, at least in director Neill Hartley's production (though I tried to imagine how it could be funny and could conjure nothing). Richman-Weisband plays diva Audrey, who melts down during a final dress rehearsal for a stage production of Medea (you know, the one where the betrayed queen kills her children and serves them to her ex).

She shows up at the Cape Cod beach house of daughter Kitty (Kirsten Quinn) and her husband Dennis (Rob Hargraves). The childless 30somethings are clearly at odds, and Mommy's arrival, after a two and a half year absence, doesn't help; Kitty binge-eats and Dennis complains about losing his office (where the ad exec supposedly writes a science fiction novel, though so far it's all in his head).

Silver adds next-door neighbors: Lucas (Arlen Hancock) is a pot dealer who supplies the local domestics, and his widowed father Winston (Steve Gleich) is an easy target for fast-rebounding, opportunistic Audrey, who needs to solve a cash-flow problem. Then Gil (R.J.Magee), right-hand man to Audrey's agent, shows up to drag Audrey back to Medea. Told not to leave without her, he joins the household.

No silver linings

The play's many confessional monologues about past tragedies seem to dribble forth from nowhere: Audrey finally tells Kitty about her absent father; Lucas and Winston share stories about Lucas's late mother; and Gil provides his father's biography — all without that Nicky Silver so-painful-it's-funny tone or even much motivation to unload. Scenes stop rather than end, though that could be Hartley's shortcoming as well as Silver's; the play's many short scenes have little dramatic build, suspense, or resolution, and the production doesn't provide music or lighting that might accentuate each scene's conclusion or speed the transitions between them.

Fortunately, the actors' commitment to the material keeps the play interesting. Best realized is Kitty and Dennis's tortured relationship by accomplished actors Quinn and Hargraves, complicated by Dennis's interest in Lucas, whom Hancock makes believably adrift. Magee's Gil seems along mainly for laughs and provides some, but Richman-Weisband and Gleich's romance never sparks.

Their veracity outshines what seems like lazy writing from Silver, who wraps up Too Much Sun with speeches directly to the audience about the characters' fates. Some of what happens to them afterward might make a more interesting play.

For Carol Rocamora’s review of the 2014 New York production, click here.