Family Drama.(Theater review)

In Lucy Thurber's "Scarcity" (an Atlantic Theatre Company production at the Linda Gross), the thirty-something Martha (Kristen Johnston) is a case study in co-dependence. She both fights for her life and hands it over to Herb (Michael T. Weiss), her husband of almost twenty years. Even as he lurches in and out of his crummy La-Z-Boy, swilling whiskey and sputtering obscenities, you can't take too seriously the invective that Martha hurls at him--mostly because she doesn't. Martha is rather thrilled by the fact that her man has retained his bad-boy swagger after all these years. In her eyes, Herb was, and still is, a catch--a Sean Penn type, without the conscience. She'll never tame him; nor does she want to. Part of what makes Herb hot to Martha, despite his alcohol-induced blackouts and his inability to take care of his family, is his physical strength and his verbal cruelty. Herb makes Martha feel both protected and put-upon, like a sexy martyr.

The slovenly king of his castle, Herb keeps all his minions at his beck and call--not only Martha but their prepubescent daughter, Rachel (Meredith Brandt), about whose body he makes leering comments, and their adolescent son, Billy (Jesse Eisenberg). The audience's first thoughts are: Will Martha and Herb's cycle of abuse and self-abuse cause irreparable damage to their children? And how did Martha and Herb devolve from the beauties they once must have been--they're both tall and rangy, with a kind of flickering charm that cuts through their funk--into these semi-adults who recoil from hope, like babies from curdled milk? Gone are the days when Herb and Martha were escapees from a Bruce Springsteen song, filled with possibility. Twenty minutes or so into their bickering, you realize how much the couple seem to enjoy the tune they can't get out of their heads. It goes like this: Despair, destruction, despair. Blessedly, Thurber never explains how Martha and Herb came to this pass. Johnston and Weiss manage to stitch their characters' past into their present behavior, and they act up a storm while doing it; too much expository dialogue would have left them less time to explore.

Curtain up: Martha is at home, hanging out with Rachel, watching TV, in the kind of sad one-story house you'd drive right by on a wintry afternoon on your way to somewhere else, trying not to imagine the tacky lives of its inhabitants. Inside, grime coats everything, even the countertop that Martha tries to wipe down from time to time. (The dismayingly realistic set is by Walt Spangler.) Rachel sits on the sofa with her mom and reads tarot cards. For Rachel, this is more than a hobby; she's looking for her future. Martha, on the other hand, is just having a little breather--and a cigarette--before she goes off to work the night shift at a grocery store. Her family can't make it on food stamps alone. Suddenly, Louie (Todd Weeks), Martha's cousin and a town cop, comes in with Herb. Herb is not four sheets to the wind--he's eight. Not only has he thrown up on Louie's uniform; he's been handcuffed to prevent any future disturbances. Herb, however, is all about disturbances. And, no matter how pissed off his family may seem, he knows that he's safe: he provides the only drama that these humdrum pinheads ever experience.

After Louie leaves, randy Herb claims his prize, carrying Martha off to bed, despite her protestations. In their offstage bedroom, they perform the kind of mating dance that Rachel and Billy--who's just come home--are familiar with: noisy, brutal, and brief. Billy has a black eye: he got into a fight at school. What he's really fighting for is to catapult himself past his parents' miserable complacency and find some sort of hope. That hope arrives in the slim, stylish form of a teacher named Ellen (Maggie Kiley), who both sees Billy's potential and is attracted to him. In Thurber's world, sex is less a quest for pleasure or an ...