The play by Marisa Smith, now playing at New Jersey Repertory Company, is a comedy full of interesting ideas and a great deal of heart.
Marisa Smith's new play "Mad Love," now receiving its New Jersey premiere at Long Branch's New Jersey Repertory Company, is a romantic comedy full of interesting ideas, the seeds of compelling story lines, and a great deal of heart.
A confident, independent young businesswoman struggles to hide a college trauma she'd prefer to keep secret. A man struggles to recover from a brain injury while coming to grips with his own responsibility in the act that caused it. A middle school teacher tries to balance a love life with family obligations that pull him in many different directions.
None of these stories is as developed as it could be, as the play labors to cram all its ideas into ninety minutes. Still, even if "Mad Love" could have used more time in the development hopper, Smith succeeds in creating characters worth spending some time with, and NJ Rep's production is an accomplished one.
At the center of the play is Brandon (Graham Techler), who teaches middle school, dates women, looks after his sick brother, and handles the affairs of his elderly mother. None of this he does particularly well. His romantic opposite is Sloane (Alex Trow), who is twenty-six, successful, and determined to live life on her own terms. She has a very specific plan for the future that involves Brandon who, far less of a long-term thinker than Sloane, balks at any notion of commitment.
This battle between her determination and his reluctance provides the central conflict of the play. We also come to meet Doug (Jared Michael Delaney), Brandon's brother, who permanently altered his life trying to impress his frat brothers in college. In the midst of trying to get himself better, Doug finds himself the sounding board for the other characters.
Although the play is most interested in Brandon and Sloane's relationship, the spark between Techler and Trow never seems genuine. Happily, Doug is the play's most interesting character, as Delaney shows him to have found unexpected levity in his trauma. Brandon and Sloane worry about the hassles of the day-to-day within a larger context of their lives, but Doug simply puts one foot in front of the other as best he can. Brandon may insist that the recycling bin belongs in the kitchen, but in Doug's mind it should stay in the living room where they drink all their beers anyway.
It's this same sort of straightforward logic that guides his interaction with Katerina (a vibrant Brittany Proia), who may be a prostitute out to swindle him, but may also be a genuinely kind woman. As an emotional wanderer more or less at the whim of his emotions, Delaney's Doug reveals the essence of Smith's play.
Delaney is also responsible for the production's most entertaining moments: He is charged with orchestrating the scene changes of Jessica Parks's inventive, lighthearted, and impressively functional set. Repeatedly over the course of the play, Delaney must zoom around the NJ Rep's small stage to reveal or conceal hidden furniture or set pieces, as a wall slides in and out, or the panels on a door flip. The effect seems in concert with the play's notions that even the best laid plans of love and life remain irreparably manic.
Mad Love
The New Jersey Repertory Company
179 Broadway, Long Branch
Tickets: available online at www.njrep.org; through Nov. 20.
Patrick Maley may be reached at patrickjmaley@gmail.com. Find him on Twitter @PatrickJMaley. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.