The new play by Yale alumnus Dan Via — “Daddy” — that opened last night in Manhattan under the auspices of Downtowntheatre Company, features a trio of really strong performances in a story that touches on lots of interesting issues.
The play has a huge, deal-breaking flaw in the last ten minutes, but let’s stay positive for a bit. (Also, the deal-breaker involves a twist that I can’t write about here anyhow.)
The central matter at hand in “Daddy” is how a long-term friendship can be shaken when one of the friends finds a new romance.
Colin (Gerald McCullouch) and Stew (played by the writer) are middle-aged best friends — both gay — who are so tight that they are more like brothers than friends. Colin is still slim and attractive so he has no problem snagging a one-night stand whenever he’s in the mood. Stew has middle-aged spread and leaves the impression he hasn’t had a date in a long time (“Anyone who believes opposites attract hasn’t been to a gay bar,” he tells his friend.)
Colin is a popular writer for a Pittsburgh daily newspaper and Stew is a law professor at Pitt who is interviewing for a new job at Stanford as the play opens. We can tell that both men worry about the separation the job would cause, but they pretend that it’s just a great career opportunity.
Real change enters in the form of Tee (Bjorn DuPaty), a Carnegie-Mellon journ student who interns at Colin’s paper. Tee hero-worships the writer because of his tough, gay activist reporting.
Tee and Colin begin a sexual/romantic relationship that Stew thinks is entirely inappropriate — Tee was raised by his fundamentalist Christian grandparents and appears to be seeking a father figure as well as a boyfriend.
The three actors are very good, with McCullough (of the “CSI” series) displaying a mix of charisma, ego and compassion that makes it easy to see why he attracts people of different ages and types for friendship and more. Via takes the role of a rather bitter sad sack character and makes us care about a guy who is obviously not as tough as he talks, DuPaty plays the most callow and ambiguous character — he suggests a slightly sinister undertone that leaves us wondering what we don’t know about him.
“Daddy” unfolds in a series of witty and well-observed scenes that keep us interested in the characters and their problems. But then in the final 10 or 15 minutes — just when we think “Daddy” is going to turn into a David Mamet-style examination of workplace sexual harrassment — Via makes a melodramatic revelation that was frankly impossible for me to accept (detailing my objections would mean giving away the surprise — which appeared to work for some people at the TBG Arts Center last night).
The bomb Via drops is so big that I wish he had built the play around this shocker rather than tossing it at us so close to the finale.
For ticket and performance information, visit www.DaddythePlay.com
