Rosie (Christina Elise Perry) and Vinnie (Brandon Hughes) relive a difficult past in Sam Shepard’s Simpatico. (This photograph and banner photo by Monica Park.)
Simpatico is one of Sam Shepard’s later works. Although he wrote for the stage until the year of his death—his final play, A Particle of Dread, was produced in 2017—when Simpatico premiered in 1994 Shepard had already forged three decades’ worth of cryptic messages and weird interludes. So perhaps the playwright is enjoying a well-earned laugh at his own expense when, early in the first scene, one of the play’s two protagonists turns to the other and asks, “Do you wanna talk or do you wanna be cryptic and weird?”
Carter (Kirk Gostkowski) tries to explain Vinnie’s situation to Cecilia (Elizabeth Bays). Photograph by Monica Park.
Those qualities were the temperaments he chose in order to explore the American condition, to fill an audience with fiery dread. Unfortunately, Simpatico is not so hot. In the tepid production at the Chain Theatre, the hallmarks of a Shepard play are all there, but most lack intensity, adrift in a convoluted backstory. A buried secret is unearthed, but to shallow effect. Two men wrestle with their shared history, but they are not brothers (as in True West), just friends torn apart by their taste for wealth, women and alcohol.
Vinnie (Brandon Hughes) is down and out, living in a filthy apartment in Cucamonga, Calif. He claims to be a detective as a way to impress women, but he clearly doesn’t have a clue. His only means of income are the extortion payments he has been receiving for the past 15 years from his wealthy friend, Carter (Kirk Gostkowski). Vinnie and Carter were in the business of fixing horse races back in the day. At one point, when a racing official named Simms was about to turn them in, they blackmailed him into silence, setting him up with a beautiful woman at a Motel 6 and covertly snapping compromising photos. That woman, Rosie (Christina Elise Perry), was Vinnie’s girlfriend at the time. Now she is Carter’s wife.
Vinnie has held on to a shoebox full of evidence of the whole mess, forcing Carter into long-term payments to keep the matter hush-hush. He is afraid of losing the home he moved to in Kentucky, taking Rosie, as well as Vinnie’s Buick, along with him on his way to becoming a family man while building a career as a white-collar cellphone entrepreneur.
Kelly (Monica Park, right) finds her boss, Rosie (Perry), hard to read. Photograph by Luis Amador.
Carter returns to Cucamonga, though, when Vinnie goes into crisis mode. Things are not working out with Vinnie’s current girl, Cecilia (Elizabeth Bays). His posing as a detective is not so much impressing her as it is leading her to have him arrested. Vinnie hopes that Carter can go to Cecilia and talk her down; in return, Vinnie will surrender the shoebox and just live his life. Carter agrees, though in a consequential aside, he tells the scheming Vinnie that Simms (Pete Mattaliano), too, is living in Kentucky. Under an assumed name, he works assessing thoroughbreds for a bloodstock agency.
Rather than closely track the way Vinnie grows powerful while Carter becomes more of a mess as the dynamic between them changes, Shepard interjects scenes with the secondary characters that muddle the story. Cecilia, it turns out, is naïve and firmly denies Vinnie’s version of their relationship. Rosie, the crucial point of contention between Vinnie and Carter, does not show up till the third act and has just a single scene. Facing off with Vinnie, she tries to deny her sordid past even while claiming control over it. And Simms is visited, separately, by both Vinnie and Cecilia in scenes that find him, by turns, stoic and pervy, while waxing poetic on the state of horse breeding, thus to infer human breeding as well:
From the glue factory to the winner’s circle—each and every one of them carries some common factor, minuscule as it may be.
Under the direction of David Zayas Jr. in his Off-Broadway debut, the cast works hard to find their characters’ inner truths, with varying degrees of success. As Vinnie, Hughes eventually succeeds in being believably self-deceived and turning that trait into something powerful. Gostkowski often seems uncomfortable in Carter’s skin, his left hand grasping at his suit jacket pocket, or his body turned upstage at an odd angle. Mattaliano is more creepy than sad as Simms, and Bays struggles to find consistency with Cecilia’s eccentricities. Perry comes out swinging as Rosie, but there is little stage time for her to dig into the depths (and even fewer minutes for Monica Park, playing her put-upon nanny).
In an era before video conferencing, the play simply ignores the hours (and money) spent on flights between California and Kentucky. The characters, and the play’s narrative arc, might well have benefited had everyone just stayed in Cucamonga.
Sam Shepard’s Simpatico plays through June 29 at the Chain Theatre (312 West 36th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday, and Sunday. For tickets and information, visit chaintheatre.org.
Playwright: Sam Shepard
Direction: David Zayas Jr.
Sets: Jackson Berkley
Costumes: Debbi Hobson
Lighting: Michael Abrams
Sound: Greg Russ
