Lean-To
Now playing at 59E59, Stephen Sheffer’s Lean-To, a difficult-but-somewhat-charming exploration of interpersonal relationships masquerading as a comedy, blows up fairly spectacularly, and you see it coming. If it were harder to care about the characters, if they were less likable, if your compassion weren’t evoked, it would be harder to be ticked off at the predictable-ness, but since the characters are so appealing, it’s easy to think, “Please, please don’t do (X),” only to have (X) appear soon after. Maybe predictability is the point: no matter how kind we are, Sheffer seems to say, anything can go wrong, and we should have seen it coming.
Connor Gallerani’s admirable scenic design leads us to find ourselves, like Dante, in a dark wood. Xavier (John Alejandro Jeffords) arrives at a lean-to, a rustic half-cabin built to house hikers along a mountain forest trail. He luxuriates in the peace and quiet, dismisses technology (other than, y’know, videoing himself so he can post to social media later) changes his clothes, and sets up an astonishing amount of equipment. (Really, who knew that camping involved so much stuff?) He is thrilled to find the lean-to untenanted and looks forward to spending time with himself in the solace of nature, away from urban pressures, in blessed solitude.
About that solitude: it doesn’t last, of course. When newbie hikers Yvonne (Larisa Oleynik) and Zed (Joshua David Robinson) arrive, an interracial couple who are somewhat underprepared and also kinda too cute in that postmodern way that’s all about performing intimacy, well, real intimacy happens. That can get complicated, and it does.
Director Jesse Jou lets his actors explore their tropes (gay bartender, Black urbanite, perky White woman) unimpeded, showing off their smarts, their spirits, and yet more equipment. As unwelcome Xavier may find Yvonne and Zed at first, the trio bond over a shared cookpot and packaged food, and belting Britney Spears. Y and Z set up their own campsite adjacent to the lean-to, which involves some interesting interpersonal experiments – Zed is a therapist, Yvonne a lawyer, and the two of them make cooperation into performance art. The first cracks in their relationship are revealed here; why do they need to behave in this therapy-adjacent way?
It’s a setup for greater shared intimacies, and deeper cracks, acted out over yet more equipment. We learn history from each character, in a set of monologues that reveal, in turn, Zed’s anger, which ranges from his pissed-offed-ness left over from summer camp – so why are you hiking? – to the more general Black man’s rage. Xavier speaks feelingly of his loneliness as a gay man. Yvonne’s long, long verbal crash and burn is the highlight, though; her fury, expressed at such length, with such cleverness: it’s hard to believe any two men would sit silently through it, regardless of their feelings or responsibilities. But they do, which may be the least believable moment in the show.
The excellent actors do what they can with the play, and the show’s designers — sound (Jennie Gorn), costume (Krista Grevas), and lighting (Elaine Wong) in addition to Gallerani — have given them a beautiful looking, beautiful sounding, beautifully lighted space to work with. The whole production evokes generosity and kindness for Xavier, Yvonne, and Zed. Were the look, sound, and feel of Lean-To less wonderful than it is, the show would hurt more when it reveals how much these characters, trying to be true to themselves, are the farthest thing from generous.
Using solitude and getting away from it all (however impossible that may be) as a way to gain self-knowledge, perhaps we find out things we did not necessarily need to make public. Sometimes that’s about other people, sometimes ourselves. Sheffer’s Lean-To doesn’t shy away from those truths, no matter how uncomfortable they may be.
Lean-To
At 59E59 Theatres
59East 59th St.
Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes, no intermission
Through October 10
