Word: mccanns
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...McCann-Paul's Mall...
Great teams make great playoff runs a habit, not a diversion. Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers, Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls, Joe Montana's San Francisco 49ers, Cy Youngs' Atlanta Braves...Sean McCann's Harvard Crimson. They won their playoff games and their pieces of silverware because they were legitimately good teams, occasional postseason upsets notwithstanding (e.g. Oilers vs. Flames...
Even more enigmatic, Doyle's Stanley seems at first to be a top-dog boarder, criticizing breakfast with adolescent snideness and even menacing Meg, an easy target. Gradually, his nervous energy increases as he faces the impending threat of Goldberg and McCann. Finally, after shuffling attempts at lying and evasion, he is reduced to cowering, shell-shocked silence. Playing his character with the jumpiness of a dog that knows he's going to be whipped, Doyle turns out a finely shaded performance...
Clarke and Heawood as the two dark horsemen, McCann and Goldberg, are sinister enough in their own different ways, each keeping to his side of the stage. Clarke nails the heavy, deliberate body language of a tough flunky, but at the same time implies McCann's underlying madness, through red-faced yelling that seems to go too far. Heawood's Goldberg is a talky smoothie, calming his victims like a dog trainer with empty statements of conciliation. Though self-assured and, quite apparently from his spiffy vest, the leader of the two, Goldberg would fall apart under closer examination. Heawood...
...production's tragic flaw, then, consists of a desire to package the play's ambiguities up neatly. After all these fine performances, the interpretation put at the end upon Goldberg and McCann's departure with Stanley comes across as heavy-handed, and far less interesting than the strange world the characters have been inhabiting for the last hour or so. And the ending to each act--placing one character in the corner of the exaggerated perspective created by a slanting set--already pushes patience...