Painful Progress Unfolds in ‘The Dinosaurs’ Among the Saturday Survivors Group

Jacob Perkins’s “The Dinosaurs” begins with a conversation about donuts, and other starchy goodies. An unspecified group is about to meet, and a woman who has been a member for a while is making small talk with someone who is interested in joining but is clearly, painfully nervous.It’s a funny exchange, but you get a distinct sense that, just as the characters are trying to put one another at ease, the playwright is lulling his audience into a false sense of comfort with their talk of how filling can squirt onto clothes, and the etymology of the word cupcake. In fact, one lesson that will emerge from this short and mostly quiet but haunting play is that in difficult times, sharing such quotidian details can be an act of grace. The women we encounter in “The Dinosaurs”, which is being staged at Playwrights Horizons, have had their fill of such times, and Mr. Perkins has drawn them with gentle humor and pronounced empathy.Better still, director Les Waters has recruited a top-drawer ensemble to play the women who attend this meeting—or meetings, I should say, as Mr. Perkins’s script can allow years to pass within a scene or even a brief exchange, with no indication of this shift aside from the language. We must listen to these characters closely, and that requires little effort, given the intensity of their experiences and the superb portraits here.The group calls itself Saturday Survivors, and in consists of recovering alcoholics, all of them female. With the exception of Rayna, that anxious newcomer we meet initially—who actually doesn’t join until later in the play— they also all have names that begin with the letter J, reinforcing the bond that they share and allowing the playwright to have some fun with alliteration. Jane is the least patently neurotic of the bunch and, perhaps for this reason, its leader; April Matthis conveys her sturdy warmth and empathy in a lovely, understated performance. Joan, played by a typically sharp Elizabeth Marvel, is more brittle and can be unwittingly condescending, a quality that Ms. Marvel mines for all its comic potential.There’s another Joane, distinguished in the script and playbill by the spelling of her name but also judgmental, and equally well played by a tart Maria Elena Ramirez. Mallory Portnoy is by turns poignant and amusing as Janet, seemingly the youngest member, who irritates the others with her oblivious fussing; the magnificent Kathleen Chalfant is cast as the eldest, Jolly, whose decades of sobriety have not extinguished a naughty sense of humor.The gals sip coffee, share gossip, and acknowledge rules and rituals, some of which carry the folksy banality of modern self-help literature. As a meeting ends, Jane calls for “the we version of the serenity prayer,” which concludes, “Keep coming back/It works if you work it/So work it and live it/You’re worth it.”This is not a book club or an aerobics class, of course, and Mr. Perkins has provided his characters with material that reflects their struggles, including a few lyrical, unsettling monologues. Joan details a harrowing childhood; Janet recalls a dream in which a mysterious driver, while taking her to an undisclosed location, kept urging her to discard a string of increasingly personal belongings.Joane’s passage is the most devastating, focusing on her son, who is 15 in the account. The event clearly took place years before she describes it, but her agony in doing so, beautifully relayed by Ms. Ramirez, suggests that something far darker has transpired since, and that she holds herself at least partly responsible.“The Dinosaurs” ends on a more uplifting note, with Rayna, or Buddy, as she sometimes calls herself—played by a piquant Keilly McQuail—clearly further along on her healing journey, assuming a role similar to Jane’s when they first met. Progress can be painful, Mr. Perkins shows us, but as illustrated here, it’s moving to behold.

Painful Progress Unfolds in ‘The Dinosaurs’ Among the Saturday Survivors Group

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