THEATER REVIEW
BELLEVILLE
New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St.; 212-279-4200. Through March 31. Running time: 105 minutes, no intermission.
Hot on the heels of Jesse Eisenberg's "The Revisionist" comes another off-Broadway show depicting Americans in their late 20s as neurotic and immature. The couple in Amy Herzog's "Belleville" put up a better front than the writer Eisenberg portrays in his own play. They're also more messed up, and in deeper trouble.
The clues appear in the very first scene, when Abby (Maria Dizzia) bursts in on her husband, Zack (Greg Keller), while he's enjoying some Internet porn. He gives a vague excuse about not being at work on a weekday, which she buys. But then Abby tends to buy what Zack sells.
Joan Marcus
Maria Dizzia and Greg Keller are a married American couple in Paris, whose lives are filled with instability in "Belleville."
The pair call each other "homey," but there's tension in their modest Parisian apartment, located in the neighborhood of the title — they moved to France after he got a job with Doctors Without Borders.
At 28, Abby is delaying adulthood. She still talks to Daddy daily, and doesn't engage with her new life. Zack, who smokes pot with their landlord, Alioune (Phillip James Brannon), fares better. Or looks like he does.
With critically acclaimed shows like "4000 Miles" and "The Great God Pan" under her belt, Herzog has become the go-to playwright for psychological nuance.
But while "Belleville" explores domestic strife, this time around there's also an actual plot that flirts with suspense — a surprise since writers like Herzog are usually precious about anything smacking of genre.
Still, nothing here will make a John Grisham fan blink. The course of events is stretched like taffy, diluting their impact, and disbelief needs to be put on hold about halfway through. Whether on purpose or not, it's also hard to care for the main characters, embroiled in lies, passivity or both.
Too bad, because they're in expert hands. The production's biggest asset is the complicity between Dizzia — a Tony nominee for "In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)" — and Keller. Under Anne Kauffman's direction, the actors track Abby and Zack's instability and their dangerous co-dependance with a mix of vulnerability and confidence. They almost make us care.
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