Off Broadway

Howard Katz

 (Laura Pels Theater; 407 seats; $73.75 top)

By DAVID ROONEY

Euan Morton, left, interacts with Alfred Molina, who stars in the Roundabout Theater Company’s production of Patrick Marber's 'Howard Katz.'

A Roundabout Theater Company presentation of a play in one act by Patrick Marber. Directed by Doug Hughes.
 
Robin - Euan Morton
Howard Katz - Alfred Molina
Bern - Max Baker
Nat - Charlotte Parry
Norm - Edward Hajjcq
Jo - Alvin Epstein
Ollie - Patrick Henney
Ellie - Elizabeth Franz
Jess - Jessica Hecht
 

Downward spirals don't get much more deadening than the one traveled by the eponymous midlife-crisis mascot of Patrick Marber's corrosive glumfest, "Howard Katz." The writing is often pungent, and Alfred Molina's performance in the lead role strikes an audacious balance between vileness and emotional devastation. But the play is so unrelentingly dour and one-dimensional, it never really draws you in. Whether in his stage work ("Closer") or films ("Notes on a Scandal"), Marber has not had much use for consolation, and there's no sign of redemption in this distancing drama.

Nonetheless, the play is not a total loss. Marber is a grown-up writer who's certainly not afraid of the dark. He stares down his morally unmoored characters with a cool, penetrating gaze and has a facility for the kind of steel-edged dialogue and nasty humor that makes actors drool. But in this punishing one-act, which has taken more than five years to cross the Atlantic after bowing in 2001 at the National in London, he introduces a character at rock-bottom only to drive him ever deeper into the sludge.

The play is hobbled by its lack of ambiguity. Not only is Molina's Howard suicidal when we meet him, but, even more pitiably, he's a talent agent. While his professional colleagues Ari Gold in "Entourage" and Diane in "The Little Dog Laughed" spike their ruthlessness with winning self-irony, agents, along with lawyers and real estate brokers, are generally regarded as the human equivalent of vultures.

Though his barbs are by no means unamusing, Howard is a particularly noxious example of the species. He barks commands at his high-rotation assistants ("Usher!" "Exit!"), alienates more clients than he brings onboard and burns bridges with malicious abandon ("You have no talent!"; "Eat some food! You look like a skull on a stick!").

And while he loves his wife (Jessica Hecht) and son (Patrick Henney), his family usually comes second to his job. The character's sour starting point is "The world is a turd and we are but flies," which doesn't exactly make his descent precipitous.

Howard is first seen sitting on a bench in Scott Pask's austere brick-walled set, which in the opening scene depicts a garden courtyard, but, aside from a small patch of green, could almost be a dungeon. The infernal red glow of Christopher Akerlind's lights, flooding at intervals through glass bricks above, make it also like an antechamber of hell. The yarmulke he's wearing is a tip-off that Howard's angst derives in part from a crisis of faith.

Bad Jew, bad father, bad husband, bad son, bad person. Howard's orgy of self-loathing is fueled by these acknowledgements and more. His success as a showbiz agent has pulled him away from religion and his working-class East End London roots, leaving him increasingly uncentered, without meaning in his life. He respects professionals -- whether it's an undertaker, a thief or God -- and denigrates everyone else, even giving a withering critique to a hooker for his own failure to perform. His disdain for the world reflects his own tumble into irreligious emptiness.

Marber's succession of flashbacks fail to trace a credible arc for Howard's unraveling or even to indicate a precise trigger for his depression. More than anything, it's a fight with his father, Jo (Alvin Epstein), a humble barber coping with his own crisis after the end of a long-term extramarital relationship. The silence between them prior to the old man's death gnaws away at Howard, who carries around the urn containing Jo's ashes in a plastic bag as his professional, personal and spiritual life disintegrates.

Watching big, burly, gloomy-eyed Molina crumble is haunting -- at times harrowing. His performance is compelling because he refuses any bid for sympathy yet somehow remains human despite Howard's abrasiveness. But, disappointingly for such an accomplished writer, the play lacks the complexity to make Howard's suffering universal. His journey goes from nowhere to nowhere; there's no moral, no awakening. A climactic scene in a casino is particularly ineffectual, pushing a rather obvious equation between gambling losses and emotional bankruptcy.

There are some interesting character wrinkles from the supporting cast, notably Epstein's Jo, whose toughness has mellowed into sorrow; Max Baker as Howard's brother, too exposed to his sibling's harshness to swallow his sudden discovery of values; and Euan Morton as both a wily street kid and an actor client fed up with Howard's rudeness. Others like Hecht and Elizabeth Franz as Howard's mother are too thinly drawn as characters to register.

Despite Doug Hughes' brisk production for Roundabout, with its crisp delineation of past and present and its efficient, instantaneous scene transitions, this is an unrewarding 90 minutes. Time spent with a soul who was lost to begin with and simply remains so is a tragedy without pathos.

Sets, Scott Pask; costumes, Catherine Zuber; lighting, Christopher Akerlind; original music and sound, David Van Tieghem; dialect coach, Gillian Lane-Plescia; fight direction, Rick Sordelet; production stage manager, James FitzSimmons. Opened March 1, 2007. Reviewed Feb. 22. Running time: 1 HOUR, 30 MIN.