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 molders of women (e.g. Pygmalion). Once we get to the Americans playwrights, O’Neill and Miller often feature middle aged losers, but in the end ennobles them (Death of a Salesman, The Iceman Cometh). This tack is also taken by Updike and Roth in their novels. You see in these the sympathy the author feels for the frustrated middle-aged guy, no matter how pathetic they become. Tennessee Williams mostly ignores them or make them ciphers. An exception to this is Thomas Hardy, who wrote compelling clinical portrayals of working men, e.g. in The Mayor of Casterbridge, which memorably begins with a drunker worker selling his wife to another man, then living down the consequences for the rest of his life.

Modern writers have been more interested in dissecting the psyche of middle-aged guys. Sam Shephard loves to analyze the male psyche, and in the end admires it. Pinter takes a cool distance from men’s emotions, and psychoanalyzes their relationships with women. Film director/writer Jed Apatow often teams with actor Paul Rudd to perceptively deal with middle aged male angst and crisis, but from a humorous/sympathetic context (About 40, The 40 Year Old Virgin). Tracy Letts is perhaps closest to Mr. Apatow in his approach to guys, but is less sympathetic. In Linda Vista (named for a soulless suburb of San Diego) we follow a couple years in the life of Dick Wheeler (he dislikes his first name). He divorces his wife, leaves her and his porn-addicted teenage son, falls in love with two women simultaneously (one 25 years junior to him), and is stuck in a dead-end job—as a camera (!) repairman. He manipulates younger women to fall for his wounded-bird routine, then dumps them. He has a best friend with whom he plays racquetball and confides (sort of), but is mostly portrayed as a solitary, pathetic loser, superbly played here by Ian Barford, who has played this role in each of its three big city iterations. The problem with this character is that, unlike Willie Lohman or even Paul Rudd’s characters, there is no nobility here, and we are not drawn to empathize or sympathize with Wheeler. This monochrome dysfunctionality can work in a Roth or Updike novel, where the added words and subplots can explicate some context or complexity, but becomes wearisome in a two hours + play limited to Wheeler and his female “conquests”. Wheeler is smart and witty, and uses laser-like humor to deflect his  and others’ feelings—his life coach (!) girlfriend nails him on this. But in this play humor, while trenchant and on point about modern issues like Trump, Republicans who voted for Trump, safe spaces, and social media (he hates all of them), seems more like a way for the playwright to vent, and comes across like an awkward fusion of a late night standup comedy routine with Death of a Salesman. I found myself laughing neither with nor at the character, and too distanced from him to make any kind of emotional connection. Wheeler’s photography is a metaphor for his failure; he had talent but failed to build upon it. At the end of the play his closeup photography of yet another prospective younger woman partner had both a creepy voyeuristic side and also a positive take—he his trying to actually see others now, even if through a camera lens. I did not think this metaphor was adequately convincing to make me admire this guy at all, however.

The play uses a rotating set that allows us to easily follow Wheeler and his women between the living area and bedroom of his depressing suburban apartment (with a tiny view of the ocean).  Visual metaphors abound—Wheeler’s bad hip leads to increased limping and more difficult sex as the play progresses, and his excellent photographs are mostly scattered in boxes, the residua of a failed past life. The direction and acting were uniformly excellent, obviously benefitting from three runs with the same core director and actors. Mr. Barford was amazing. He was onstage for every minute of the long play, including several nude and sex scenes (well-choreographed, and alternately funny and painful). While Mr. Letts’ writing never allowed him much range to grow or evolve, the actor pulled of the rather monochrome part beautifully.

I’ve now seen four plays by Mr. Letts. Two (this one and Man from Nebraska, 2004) present unappealing middle-aged men who similarly leave their families. It seems like this playwright can create great female characters who are fierce tyrants, or annoying male characters who are pathetic. When these groups interact well, as in August, Osage County, sparks fly. But as this play showed, it’s a hard formula to replicate.