Theater Review: Linda Vista Droopily Dissects Middle Aged Men
Linda Vista Written by Tracy Letts Directed by Dexter Bullard Starring Ian Barford Hayes Theater, Manhattan October 24, 2019 Tracy Letts (b. 1965), famous as an actor and for writing the superb August, Osage County (2007), composes plays about dysfunctional people. His terrifying women tend to dominate their torn, dysfunctional men. Linda Vista (2017) has come to Broadway after being written for the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, then migrating to LA. It features a virtuosic role for a male actor, both showing the pathetic frailties of male midlife crisis as well as providing a sounding board for Letts’ frustrations with modern culture. For me, it succeeded moderately, but failed to cohere as a great play. Middle-aged men have certainly evolved in the literature of the last century. Prior to 1900, playwrights were not so interested in them; Macbeth and Hamlet are young men, while Lear is aged. Ibsen mostly wrote great female leads. Shaw liked men, but more as