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A CurtainUpPhiladelphia Review
Superior Donuts
You know what life is?
Franco A derailment.— Arthur Live long and prosper.— Lady
Superior Donuts
James Ijames as Franco and Craig Spindle as Arthur.
(Photo: Mark Garvin)
Tracy Letts's Superior Donuts is an impressive and sturdily built old-style kind of a play, and Arden's Associate Artistic Director, Edward Sobel, lately of Steppenwolf, is an impressive kind of director.

Letts's early works, Killer Joe ('91) and Bug ('96), are off-kilter plays with a wild streak. I didn't see them until about five years ago at Theatre Exile, but they looked like the work of an enfant terrible out to change things. I would have thought his mature work would go off somewhere in that violent, crazy, unsettling direction. But some kind of sea change must have started with The Man From Nebraska ('03),.

Letts has found balance. His massive success, August, Osage County (Pulitzer, Tony, Outer Critics Circle Awards & more,'08), is deeply character-generated and it aligns with classic American theater traditions. I found it impressive if over-stuffed. Superior Donuts, with its solid construction and heavy issues tucked under eccentrically funny and touching dialogue, is in the August, Osage tradition, but without the excesses. I admire Donuts, yet I miss the craziness and promise of new directions in his two early plays.

Superior Donuts takes its time to build, the old fashioned way. The past leaks out. You see its effects on the present and on the characters, in their dawning understanding of their own and others' needs. The story principally concerns Arthur, the emotionally detached owner of an old donut shop, and Franco, an ambitious kid. Craig Spidle is remarkable as the donut shop owner, a man who has been shut down for years. He stays real and embodies Arthur's hesitations and awkwardness as he faces problems from his past, deals with people who have become important to him, and eventually assesses situations that finally may require action on his part. Socially inept, Arthur is afraid to respond to a woman cop who, he has been told, likes him.

The catalyst, in the person of the clever and complex black kid named Franco, is played by clever and complex James Ijames. All the characters are wonderful and wonderfully played: An old drunk lady, called Lady, is portrayed by unrecognizable Nancy Boykin. The dream role of a non- P.C. (but apologetic about it) Russian small businessman is neatly handled by David Mackay. Brian Anthony Wilson of The Wire fame, and Jennifer Barnhart are good, nice cops. Pete Pryor and Jake Blouch as knucklebreakers remind us that funny bad guys are really scary. Ian Bedford as a new, mostly silent Russian immigrant, is heartwarming

Letts's long acting experience may account in part for his deftness in crafting touching yet truly funny roles and his skill in carefully placing the considerable laughs. He is also adept at setting up a sense of danger. By the end of act one there's a lurking feeling of unease, and the audience senses impending tragedy. Substantial and carefully plotted-out events and desires propel the story forward, and Letts's characters' disparate desires will converge in a trajectory just beyond view, where they will be corralled into a resolution.

The only dissonant moments are the monologues where Arthur fills us in on his situation. The audience does need to understand his history and issues, things he actually doesn't want to talk about, but this presents a structural problem. This play is different from Hamlet, for instance, where in soliloquies we overhear Hamlet talk to himself -- considering his options, making observations, and giving himself memos.

In Superior Donuts Arthur, retreating into reverie, delivers exposition that reveals pivotal events in his past. But clearly, he doesn't need to fill himself in on his own history, so he must be talking to us. His first monologue is jarring because it doesn't fit the format the playwright has chosen. By the time his subsequent monologues come around we are accustomed to the conceit. But it still doesn't work because the character is addressing the 'unseen' and unacknowledged audience from within the confines of a hyper realistic set. If he were standing outside the set proper, beyond the 4th wall boundary, the monologues might have been more congruent.

The old style set, on a thrust stage, is a vivid and remarkable recreation of a vintage luncheonette-type shop in a dicey neighborhood that progress has left behind. A cutaway exposes steel girders above the shop. The Superior Donuts sign hanging outside looks for all the world like a faded 50s sign. It is entertaining just to discover all the set's perfect little details.

In another show that recently played in town, [title of show] , (yes, that's its name), it is said that if you have donuts for dinner, thirty minutes later you're hungry for something meatier. That's not the case here. This Donut is substantial and sweet. It's got it all - surface stuff and deep stuff. It has the cops & donuts thing, long-simmering problems, clashes, and insights to think about. It's clear that this is a work of consequence.

Superior Donuts by Tracy Letts
Directed by Edward Sobel
Cast: Nancy Boykin, David Mackay, James William Ijames, Peter Pryor, Craig Spidle, Brian Anthony Wilson
Set Design: Kevin Depinet
Costume Design: Alison Roberts
Lighting Design: Michelle Habeck
Sound Design: Rob Kaplowitz
Fight Director: John V. Bellomo
03/03/11- 04/03/11
2 hours and one intermission
Arden Theatre. 2nd Street, Philadelphia
Reviewed by Kathryn Osenlund based on 03/18/11 performance.
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