CARDINAL at 2nd Stage is Bloody Relentless Babble about Urban Renewal at Any/All Cost

Don't it seem to go, you don't know what you've got til it's gone?  CARDINAL at the 2nd Stage theater knocks around the issues facing dying small towns USA in dire need of urban renewal.   A worthy motif but irritatingly overstated by Lydia, a former notorious hometown girl (played with relentless irritation by Anna Chlumsky ('"Veep") returns to paint the town red.  So repeats herself until she's blue in the face.  The small dying city is in upstate New York.  Lydia has recently returned home after an unsuccessful stint as a band mgr./bar tender in Brooklyn that has left her finances deep in red ink.  Lydia thinks she's got all the answers for reviving the city.  Her first meeting is with the town's young Mayer, Jeff (Lydia's sister's former boyfriend).  She bulldozes him into putting her agenda on the town council meeting which is painting the entire downtown business district entirely red.  Yes, that's she said over & over until this flaming idea sparks the town to vote in agreement.  Her arguments were built in pat upon the city in Morocco painted all in blue & the city in Columbia painted all in yellow which keep tourists coming & business thriving.  Lydia's halcyon days from high school (a radical vigil ante antic left the town in a lengthy power outage) have not cooled down.  She's determined to pump life into this town, whether she draws blood or not.  To be sure there is collateral fallout.  Lydia's actions are known to be inappropriate (as she readily admits).  She's obdurate, obnoxious & callous.   She coerces the town to vote her way, & then proceeds to bulldoze over the mayor in bed, and some of the smaller business which have been beloved landmarks.  The more interesting & poignant storyline involves a mother, Nancy (an excellent Becky Baker, TV's "Girls" & "Freaks & Geeks") and her mentally challenged son whose bakery is forced to deface their business sign made be her husband and then eventually to sell out to a local Chinese businessman, Li-Wei Chen.  Li-Wei appropriates Lydia's "brilliant" color wash idea & turns a profit which turns away indigenous proprietors.  Red has many symbolic connotations, blood, Communism and fire & brimstone.  Here the color red is intended to turn into green; bucks, dollars, cash for the city & its inhabitants.  Playwright Greg Pierce addresses several social issues such as anti-immigration, assimilation, anti-semitism, urban decay as well as mental illness, suicide & gun violence.  But, these topics gets buried under an over burdened, garrulous & grating dialogue.  Welcomed respites came from Nancy & her son and Li-Wei Chen (Stephen Park) the savvy Chinese business opportunist.  Li-Wei's character is clever, complex & compassionate.  As for the One Act play CARDINAL it's a cardinal, it's a red finch, no '-'  it's a red herring.