A Made-for-TV Melodrama
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

After decades of loyal service, an aging company man gets fired by his much younger boss, causing him to hurl headlong into a downward spiral of painful flashbacks and rampant depression. Meanwhile, neither of the man’s two sons has ever been able to live up to their father’s paralyzing expectations. Unable to connect with the old man, they make warped adaptations. The older son continually picks fights, threatening to bring the family’s dark truths into the open. The younger boy lies, hoping to make it look as if he actually is the perfect son.
No, it’s not “Death of a Salesman.” It’s “Durango,” the new play by Julia Cho, the 31-year-old playwright. Ms. Cho’s Willy Loman is a widowed Korean immigrant named Boo-Seng Lee, and her setting is the present-day American Southwest. Despite the play’s contemporary dialogue and Asian-American cultural context, the echoes of “Salesman” are unmistakable.
It’s a bold move for a still-youthful playwright to hitch her wagon to such a beloved star, and “Durango” ultimately suffers by comparison. With its realistic sets and its TV-drama dialogue, “Durango” can feel like “Death of a Salesman” adapted for cable. But there is skilled craftsmanship here too — Ms. Cho knows how to create characters, structure scenes, and gradually reveal her characters’ secrets.
The trouble is that these three characters have a quantity of secrets that strains credulity — and all of them come pouring out on (yes, you guessed it) a spontaneous family road trip. There’s a soap-opera logic to this inundation: Why limit yourself to one homoerotic bombshell when you can have two? Unfortunately, the endless procession of “shocking” moments adds up to melodrama.
Despite Ms. Cho’s tendency to overload her domestic drama with Big Realizations, we come to care about the three characters she sets in motion. The wounded, proud Boo-Seng (James Saito) is both severe and sweet; it’s easy to see how a son could get pinned between wanting to fulfill Boo-Seng’s hopes and wanting to cast them off. To the 21-year-old Isaac (James Yaegashi), the adult world he’s about to enter is too constricting: he shouts, he postures, he plays guitar, he pulls up the hood on his sweatshirt. Most lovable is 13-year-old Jimmy (Jon Norman Schneider), a kind of huggable family mascot who tries to keep the peace by cooking dinner and winning swim meets.
There are moments in “Durango” when you glimpse Ms. Cho’s ability to write naturalistic scenes with a wonderful freshness. Stopping at a motel en route to Durango, Colo., Boo-Seng leaves the boys in the room and sits by the pool, its underwater lights giving off a kind of comforting glow. A fellow traveler drops by — a snowbird retiree — and as the two men drink a beer, the bottled-up Boo-Seng finds himself confiding in a stranger. “Used to be that a company would take care of its own,” the man says sympathetically, and in that tiny gesture, you feel the mysterious power of compassion.
Often, though, the writing feels pat. Ms. Cho telegraphs the significance of the metaphor of the superhero that Jimmy draws in his sketchbook until it’s the least interesting thing in the play. Disclosures are diminished by trite phrasing (“People are just people, and they don’t come back”) that suggests a made-for-TV movie.
Partly this television feeling is generated by the abundance of locations — motel room, kitchen, dining room, office, boy’s bedroom, car— each outfitted with a neat, compact set by Dan Ostling. And that feeling is enhanced by Chay Yew’s direction, which does little to offset the material’s tendencies toward sentimentality.
Only the performances run contrary to the television vibe; the actors are often vibrant enough to transcend a predictable line or invigorate a stale truism, to smooth over an abruptly-introduced plot point. Clearly, they respond to these characters. Ms. Cho has a big heart and a sharp eye; what she needs is a more discerning ear.
***
Molière’s “School for Wives” has always had an element of barbarism — but you wouldn’t know it from the benign production now at the Pearl, under Shepard Sobel’s brisk direction.
The sharp-tongued Arnolphe, who’s exercised his wit on every cuckolded man in town, cuts a grotesque little figure — vain, callous, ruthlessly concerned about protecting his reputation. He locks up a 4-year-old girl in a convent so he can later retrieve her as the perfect simpleton wife; when it doesn’t work, he threatens her.
Really, we ought to laugh at Arnolphe; it should be gratifying to see him get his comeuppance. But with the immensely likable Don Daily in the role, it’s impossible to get into the spirit of hating him. With his big jolly cheeks and his willingness to make an utter fool of himself, Mr. Daily is, well, charming. When you hear him say he’s going to punch his young fiancée, you think, “Oh, he couldn’t possibly mean that!”
Of course, Arnolphe did mean that, but Mr. Daily’s Arnolphe is a sort of chipper, backslapping distant cousin of that supercilious little snob. Instead of taking pleasure in his setbacks, we actually kind of root for this kinder, gentler version of the character.
Deprived of the fun of despising Arnolphe and the visual pleasures of a set (it’s all beige curtains), we’re left with the secondary characters. As the wide-eyed innocent Agnès, Hana Moon deftly punctures Arnolphe’s self-importance, and as Agnès’s dim servants, Bradford Cover and Rachel Botchan ham it up. But things never get uncomfortable or crude. By design, this “School for Wives” has an amiable bark and no bite.
“Durango” until December 10 (425 Lafayette St., at Astor Place, 212-967-7555). “School for Wives” until December 24 (80 St. Marks Place, between First and Second avenues, 212-598-9802).