Aya Cash (right) portrays Ella in Manhattan Theatre Club’s The Best We Could, with Frank Wood and Constance Shulman (in background) as her parents, Lou and Peg.
An hour into The Best We Could, you realize you’re not watching the play you thought you were. Emily Feldman’s new drama seemed like it was a semi-experimental staging of a cross-country drive during which a grown woman and her dad visit national parks and revisit moments in their lives. Then, all of a sudden, it’s about something very specific beyond the sightseeing, bonding and memories. And the play belongs to a particular category of stories—and that category is not road trips or family relationships or Our Town riffs.
Like Our Town, the play has a narrator who opens the play by welcoming the audience, stating the date and theater’s name, and introducing the characters. And like Our Town’s Stage Manager, the Best We Could narrator (Maureen Sebastian)—named Maps—takes on small parts in certain scenes. But just as the play becomes something different in its final quarter so, too, does the role of Maps.
Father (Wood) and daughter (Cash) “rediscover each other and the country that you live in,” according to the play’s narrator. Photographs by Marc J. Franklin.
Not spoiling the twist restricts what one can discuss about the play. The unusual set, or lack thereof, certainly warrants a mention. On a stage with no backdrop, the only “scenery” consists of a worn Oriental rug and a couple of chairs. (Dearth of scenery and props is another commonality with Our Town.) There are also chairs off to the sides where actors sit while not on stage; they’re always visible because the wings are exposed. This “representation of a stage ... not an illustration of a real place somewhere” is cited in the script and has been designed for the Manhattan Theatre Club production by Lael Jellinek.
That bare stage is yet another misleading thing about The Best We Could. It will ultimately look very different, thanks to a scenic deus ex machina minutes from the end of play. Somewhat jarringly, bright colors appear right around the time it becomes apparent why the play is subtitled (a family tragedy).
From the start, The Best We Could seems to focus mainly on Ella (Aya Cash), a 36-year-old Los Angeles resident who teaches chair yoga, following aborted careers working in ballet, museums and modern dance. She has just broken up with her girlfriend and is trying to find a publisher for an illustrated book she’s written “about the inner emptiness of living in a war-like society that has no future. And how we find it harder and harder to establish a connection with the world around us ... and are unable to achieve any kind of lasting satisfaction ... and basically the only way to be happy is to just renounce the right to be happy.”
Happy or not, Ella has accepted her lot in life. Nudged by her mother to achieve more, she counters, “I don’t have to always be striving toward the next thing” and “I’m not going to construct my life so it looks impressive to you.”
“On a stage with no backdrop, the only ‘scenery’ consists of a worn Oriental rug and a couple of chairs. ”
But the play turns out to not be Ella’s story alone. Her father and traveling companion, Lou (Frank Wood), is himself at loose ends, having recently lost his job and his dog. Lou’s the type who talks to everybody, and most everybody likes him.
Despite the production’s minimalist aesthetic and 90-minute running time, the script fills in many details about both Lou and Ella. You definitely get to know them and understand their loving relationship. Still, the play moves along in relatively unexciting fashion until the twist is revealed. Those shocking moments are powerfully played by Cash, Wood and Sebastian.
The three actors carry the show before then, too. Cash—who has become a TV star since her last appearance at MTC in 2008’s From Up Here—has excellent chemistry with Wood, and they bring their skilled naturalism to the roles. Sebastian creates distinctive characters in all her one-scene parts and moves seamlessly between them and her narrating duties, which have Maps telling the actors/characters what to do rather than telling the audience what they’ve done—for example: “Lou, fly to California. Get in your daughter’s car and begin a drive across the country to pick up your new dog.” Constance Shulman as Lou’s wife and Brian D. Coats as his best friend round out the cast, who are directed by Daniel Aukin.
To an extent, the unusual theatrics of The Best We Could are merely dressing up familiar story lines, or perhaps obscuring that they they’re not so original. That bombshell makes an impact, though, and if you have been reconsidering the fate of certain public figures, Feldman’s incisive writing of a key scene may give you a perspective you didn’t get from the news.
The Best We Could runs through March 26 at City Center (131 W. 55th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; manhattantheatreclub.com.
