The Old College Try

Those seeking something closer to home than Russia or Spain might consider the Washington University Performing Arts Department's staging of George F. Walker's Escape from Happiness. Walker is Canadian, but this loony comedy about the screwiest sisters since the MaGrath girls in Crimes of the Heart could be set in any large American city.

There's so much going on here, it would be foolish to try to outline the plot. But as eldest sister Elizabeth, the lesbian attorney, puts it, this is "a family that is more or less in perpetual crisis." When the play begins, Junior (who is married to the middle sister), has just been brutally beaten up. As he writhes on the kitchen floor, does his daffy mother-in-law call for an ambulance? No. She forces Junior to stagger to his feet and dance. That unusual and original scene is but a prelude to an evening of surprises and reversals that leaves the viewer almost as exhausted as the sisters. At one point we learn about a scheme to get rid of the neighborhood lowlifes; the intricate plan is founded more on momentum than on understanding. That same premise holds true for Escape from Happiness. Sometimes the plot is tough to follow but, as directed by William Whitaker, the production never loses its momentum.

The performances creep up on you. At the beginning of the evening, there's a sense that the cast hasn't quite yet figured out how to attack all this slightly surreal verbiage. But by evening's end everyone is smoothly in the groove. A special nod to Liz Neukirch, whose sympathetic police officer is spot-on from her first scene.

Despite the fact that Walker has emerged as one of Canada's most successful dramatists, he has never learned how to end his plays. They almost all drag on for too long. So it is here. But until those final minutes, by which time the audience's patience is being strained, Escape from Happiness provides an evening of invigorating inventiveness.