Babbitt
La Jolla Playhouse got famous actor Matthew Broderick to come and star in an adaptation of a famous-but-forgotten American novel from the days when novels were big, so of course the show is sold out through its entire run, but here’s what you’re missing: a brutally sad and tragic story about a man who tries and fails to become something more that he is, something more like he thought he might be when he was young, pitched like a comedy — and not a black sort of comedy, either. Something far more amiable; something that, by show’s end, might feel more like a dramedy, or even a feel-good triumph, as long as you understand that what you’re supposed to feel good about is a man learning to let go of his own hopes and dreams and just let other folks — the young, the women, and, weirdly, the rat bastards who run the rotten world — have their way. His early line “My whole life has amounted to nothing!” sparks a note of anxiety. But by the time he’s winding things down and describing his situation as “a kind of living death,” the audience is chuckling right along. This fascinating effect is a testament to the Playhouse’s production, Broderick’s performance, and maybe the fact that Babbitt is a man utterly without character. He’s happy to cheat his customers unless he likes them, happy to lie on the witness stand as long as it’s for his friend, happy to abandon one cause for another to get what he wants, etc. Maybe we’re laughing because he has no idea how despicable he is, and besides, since it’s Broderick, he’s so gosh-darn likeable despite it all! About that production: it’s polished to a high shine — much like the library-themed set — with the rest of the cast serving as both narrators and those who people Babbitt’s world: his wife, his children, his best friend, his new neighbors, the exciting new dance instructor in town who looks remarkably like the siren who haunts his dreams, etc. So you have to figure the odd bits — casting a black man as Babbitt’s downwardly-mobile son, or an Asian man as an old-style Republican establishment man worried about the threat posed by immigrants — are intentional efforts to provoke thought. In the end, it’s well done, but exactly what is done and why is maybe obscured a bit by the shine. It’s folly to review the show you wish you’d seen, but I kept wondering how a modern Babbitt would play: a conventional liberal who one day decides to blow up his life by going MAGA. The horror!
When
Ongoing until Sunday, December 10, 2023
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm |
| Fridays, 7:30pm |
| Saturdays, 7:30pm |