Have You Seen Steve Steven?

Written by Ann Marie Healy

Directed by Anne Kauffman

The East 14th Street Theater

344 East 14th Street

212-868-4444

 

Review by Christina Jacquet

 

In Ann Marie Healy's Have You Seen Steve Steven?, directed by OBIE award-winner Anne Kauffman, we enter the nightmarish world of Midwestern suburbia, where everything seems a little strange, even before two alien-like strangers show up to annihilate all the adults. Seventeen-year-old Kathleen (Stephanie Wright Thompson) is confused about life and struggles to connect with her clueless parents (Tom Riis Farrell and Alissa Ford). As the family holds a dinner party for their old friends the Dudleys, their suburban normalcy is threatened by the arrival of two unusual strangers. The newcomers eventually lure the adults away (to their death?), leaving Kathleen, the Dudleys’ son Thomas (Brandon Bales) and a foreign exchange student (Jocelyn Kuritsky) alone to face adulthood in a coming-of-age tale that channels elements of The Graduate.

 

Healy's play is delightfully bizarre and refreshingly funny, a fast-paced one-act that slows down only for appropriately-awkward pauses. Kathleen and Thomas’ teen angst could be considered cliché (picture Dustin Hoffman gazing blankly into the distance as a middle-aged man says “Plastics.”), but the story’s conventional themes are spiced up by an alien plot line and bittersweet ending. The two strangers, Hank and Vera (OBIE award-winner Matthew Maher and Carol Rosenfeld), embody the inherent weirdness of suburban life — they are completely creepy yet somehow still pass as normal neighbors. Cast standouts include Ford, who speaks with an obnoxious yet endearing Midwestern twang and manages to make suburban conformity hilarious. Thompson is also excellent as the bewildered Kathleen, and Bales has several funny moments as he attempts to banish the alien-like neighbors. The storyline is framed by Sue Rees’ outstanding set, which perfectly captures the sterile look of the average McMansion living room while still allowing Healy's writing to create a truly creepy atmosphere.

 

Have You Seen Steve Steven? employs a bizarre plot whose conclusion will leave you feeling a bit confused, both by what just happened and what's about to happen. But that’s a feeling that should put you squarely in bewildered Kathleen's shoes.