‘You Got Older,’ Together With its Frail and Forthright Family, Returns to New York

A script for the new off-Broadway production of Clare Barron’s “You Got Older” includes an author’s note dated “circa 2016,” meaning roughly a year after the play received an Obie Award. Ms. Barron informs us that her characters engage in “a lot of avoidance…Thoughts are half-processed, and there’s a desire to talk about something ‘meaningful’ more than there is a knowledge of what to say.”Anyone planning to attend the revival of “…Older”, which has just opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre in downtown Manhattan, should be warned that subjects addressed in this search for meaning include pus-oozing rashes, unpleasant odors shared by family members, and the varying sizes of avocados and penises. The first two topics are discussed at considerable length, and in graphic detail.“Older” centers on a woman in her early thirties, Mae, who returns to her small hometown in Washington after losing her boyfriend and her job in Minneapolis, to help care for her cancer-addled father. We also meet Mae’s siblings, an old schoolmate, and, in dream sequences, a cowboy who keeps rescuing her and then threatening, seductively, to rub her down or tie her up.Watching these characters tiptoe around delicate issues for roughly 100 minutes—only the cowboy is always direct about his intensions—can be tiresome, even if you’re not put off by the talk of body parts and fluids, which actually provides some comic relief. Director Anne Kauffman, whose recent Broadway credits include “Marjorie Prime” and “Mary Jane,” has recruited actors who share her affinity for dark humor, but they’re weighed down by the often meandering dialogue.As Mae, Alia Shawkat, an actress who rose to fame in the beloved television series “Arrested Development,” suffers the most. Not only does the protagonist appear in every scene, but she is saddled towards the end with one of those irritating expository monologues that contemporary playwrights sometimes favor when their work is inspired by personal experience.Ms. Shawkat manages the task with relative grace and is likeable throughout. Still, her performance has a strangely affectless quality; she and Ms. Kauffman may be trying to emphasize the character’s passivity and indecision, but Mae is no Hamlet, and the results are less than compelling.Nadine Malouf gets to bring more zest to the role of Hannah, Mae’s older sister, through whom we discover the phallic properties of avocados. Misha Brooks and Nina White do their best as, respectively, Matthew, their rather peevish brother, and Jenny, the ditzy, whiny baby of the family.Caleb Joshua Eberhardt proves just as game as Mac, who mistakes Mae for Hannah, his fourth-grade crush, when they meet in a bar, but then bonds with Mae in part over their mutual fascination with open sores. Paul Cooper struts and broods convincingly as the cowboy, whose exchanges with Mae can be similarly vivid and, if less icky, more ominous.But the most valuable player by far is Peter Friedman, a stage and screen veteran worth seeing in anything. Here he is cast as the ailing patriarch, identified simply as “Dad.” In his scenes alone with Ms. Shawkat, especially, Mr. Friedman captures both the frailty and the resilience, as well as the almost selfless concern, we associate with parents of a certain age — particularly members of this character’s generation — with effortless poignance. If you can stomach some of the other references here, Mr. Friedman’s presence makes this staging of “You Got Older” worth catching.

‘You Got Older,’ Together With its Frail and Forthright Family, Returns to New York

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