Snow Geese, Lays an Egg

The Snow Geese @ the Friedman Theatre is a new play by Sharr White (The Other Place.)  The Other Place presented last season was a contemporary play, very much of the moment.  The Snow Geese is set in 1917 at the Gaesling family lodge in upstate NY.  Elizabeth Gaesling, the matriarch, (Mary-Louise Parker) is recently widowed and mother of sons, Duncan & Arnold.  Rounding out the family saga is Elizabeth's sister, Clarissa Hohmann & her husband, Max (Danny Burstein) a German born, American citizen.  The household staff has been pared down solely to Austrian maid, Victorya.  The world is at war, Max's medical practise was destroyed by his anti-German neighbors and self-assured Duncan is about to leave for the front lines.  This leaves younger brother Arnie to manage the families' estate left in ruin.  Embittered Max left with nothing to do, reads aloud the daily casualties of WWI.  The play attempts to emulates the angst of a Chekovian family drama but fails dismally.  There are 2 factions dividing the family; the pragmatic Arnie & Aunt Clarrisa and delusional Duncan & his mother.  Arnie confronts his brother who chooses to live in denial in regards to their financial straits.  The talented Parker is miscast.  She is not convincing for this time period, nor does she appear older than her sons.  B'wy veteran Burstein plays Max entirely in one bombastic mode.  The actresses playing Clarissa and Victorya did capture the essence of their characters.  Victorya who lost her entire family in the war tells Arnie "they're many worse things than losing money." There are far worse plays but this is not the Geese who laid the golden egg.  The play barely takes flight.