One immediately senses something amiss when a violent, homophobic cop (Matthew Lillard) is called upon to chaperone his wife’s (Carla Gugino) dissertation interview with an eccentric, 70-year-old Juilliard dance instructor (Patrick Stewart). The cunning, double-dealing dialog held promise for a good thirty minutes into the show. Working from his play of the same name, writer Stephen Belber’s sexually-charged three-character drama bucks expectations — this isn’t Virginia Woolf minus Martha — until a ninth hour (and dispiritedly telegraphed) game-changer brings things crashing to an end. The performances are everything you’d hope for. But with his second hat is squarely set in place, director Belber’s idea of of visually “opening up” his string of hermetic confessionals is by moving the action out of Stewart’s apartment and into the hallway ,or snapping to attention when a character hints, “Would you like to go up on the roof?” In each instance, our helmer can’t resist framing everything in closeup and two-shots. (2015) — Scott Marks
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