BROADWAY SNAP-SHOT
by Russell Bouthiller

Dateline: 5 April, 2003

LIFE (x) 3

One disagreeable child, two dysfunctional couples and three versions of a disastrous dinner party make up an evening of theatre at the Circle in the Square in Yasmina Reza's latest play LIFE (x) 3. Directed by Matthew Warchus and translated by Christopher Hampton, the same team that launched Reza's Tony-winning ART and the well-received THE UNEXPECTED MAN, LIFE (x) 3 stars Oscar-winner Helen Hunt, John Turturro, Linda Emond and Brent Spiner.

LIFE (x) 3 opens with Henry (Turturro) and Sonia (Hunt) coping with their unruly child who, from offstage, refuses to quiet down and go to sleep. A typical and mundane scene familiar to all couples with young children, but Sonia and Henry are neither typical nor mundane. She's a regimented, controlling attorney and he's an intelligent, pliant astrophysicist.

The parents' treatment of their demanding son, Arnaud, foreshadows the handling of their unwieldy dinner guests, Hubert (Spiner) and Inez (Emond), who show up a day earlier than expected. Caught off guard by their arrival, Sonia and Henry have only cookies, Cheez-Its and ample amounts of wine to offer their guests. They are equally unprepared for the evening's revelations.

Hubert, Henry's more successful colleague, glibly announces that another researcher has published an article that proposes the same theory Henry has been developing for quite some time. Realizing that he has been bested in the "publish or perish" game, Henry languishes while Hubert shrugs it off as all part of the unpredictable consequences of the vast cosmos. Sonia lashes out at both men for mishandling the situation and Inez criticizes the couple's parental technique.

Insults fly and tempers flare as the intake of wine increases. Hubert amuses himself at the expense of his sweet-tempered wife. "What we need are women we can switch off, once in a while." Inez frets over the run in her stocking, a metaphor for a world coming unraveled. Meanwhile, Sonia reconsiders her expectation that life with an astrophysicist would be filled with "spiritual loftiness." This is a dinner party disaster of the Mary Richards' variety, seasoned with a soupcon of existential angst.

All of this plays out thrice over, retold with slight variations. Each time, Mark Thompson's bleak, heliocentric set--representing a universe cluttered with incidental toys--rotates to reflect an altered perspective. Sonia and Henry grapple with Arnaud's antics, slightly differently. Hubert and Inez show up a day early to a new tone. Henry learns that someone has beaten him to the punch in his research and responds more assertively. Hubert hits on Sonia more overtly. All the while, everyone consumes lots of Sancerre. This is, after all, Paris.

The reason for all these newfangled angles times three is not exactly clear. As the story is told and retold, one layer fails to build upon the next and each character grows less attractive and less likable with every telling. Capping things off in round three, the playwright unloads her philosophy in leaden bits of dialogue about the meaningless of life. "Sliding from an absurd euphoria to an equally absurd melancholy. It's all built on nothing." Boy, it's no wonder the French aren't too popular nowadays.

The performances in Reza's LIFE (x) 3, for the most part, run at the same temperature throughout. Hunt's Sonia remains rigid and remote from start to finish. Turturro's consistently feverish delivery becomes a bit monotonous. Spiner's Hubert goes from slimy to slimier. Only Linda Emond's Inez reveals a growing complexity. LIFE (x) 3, a lofty exercise with unclear results.