Word: furth
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Twigs, George Furth's new comedy now in pre-Broadway tryouts at the Wilbur, is as unassuming as its title would suggest. It sets forth a series of little mishaps, a quartet of marriages that have, however slightly, gone awry. Its characters are middle age and middle class. But in intention and effect the play itself is something more than middlebrow...
Where Company--whose award-winning book was also written by Mr. Furth--dissected a series of Manhatten marriages with the coolness of stainless steel. Twigs looks at a corresponding sampling of suburban couples with the compassion of a family retainer. As the program counsels, "The play takes place in a variety of kitchens, on the outskirts of a major city, on the day before Thanksgiving." Not Thanksgiving itself, mind you, but the very day before. Furth's playlets approach individual resolutions only to resolutely back away. Although there is a stability in Peter Larkin's sets--the four kitchens themselves...
...tough old lady. As much of a talker and as big a pain in the ass as any-of her daughters, as Pa (Robert Donley) himself points out. You're a wrinkled old bastard, she replies in the crisscross of invective that bind the two together. And Furth has made his point. Each of the women is her mother's daughter ("Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined," to quote Pope on the matter) and each has won success from life to the extent to which she has found a man willing to endure her weaknesses...
Even though Twigs ends on a note of high comedy (for Furth has arranged his acts so that their verbal and visual humor overtakes their early bleakness, a ploy more justifiable dramatically than thematically), it leaves behind an echo of resignation that has just barely escaped despair. None of the daughters is quite the equal of the mother, although each is herself somehow tough enough to accept the increasingly limited possibilities life offers. But then, as Emily says. "If life were perfect, we wouldn't have to go through...
Rubinstein's observation has been echoed by many audiences, who find that the record of the score yields new rewards at each exposure. Far more than George Furth's book, Sondheim's lyrics express the hip, urbane tone of a play about an uncommitted bachelor who watches the games married people play. The songs are an ambush of witty skepticisms...