Richard Greenberg’s wryly comic 1960s-set drama about a rich German-Jewish émigré family’s summer in the American Catskills makes its transfer from Bath to the St James Theatre in London this month for a short run, and I’d advise you to get booking soon as this is going to be a hot ticket.
Diana Quick plays Eva, the snobby, bossy, controlling mother of Lili (a delectable Emily Taaffe), a fragile only child just out of her teens. With no father in sight (Lili jokes that her mother killed him), there’s just Eva, Lili and their self-possessed black maid Olivia (Dona Croll) who’s more an equal part of the family than an employee.
Staying in their holiday home on the lake, they keep apart from the ‘lower life forms’ and ‘this country’s most comical misfits’ (as Eva calls them) who are holidaying on the other side of the water on the so-called American Plan (a bit like a Butlins for New York’s Jews).
That is, until a handsome young chap called Nick (Luke Allen-Gale) swims over and meets Lili. The two spark, emotionally and intellectually, and love blooms, helped forward by the not backward Lili. The next step is for Nick to meet mum Eva, a prospect that fills Lili’s heart with dread as she knows Eva’s interfering ways of old.
But they too seem to get along, even when Eva shows Nick up to not be quite all he’s promised, and she gives her blessing for the union to go ahead – until another stranger appears from the other side of the lake and things begin to get complicated.
Played out on a simple but shimmering stage dressed only with a bleached jetty and tables and chairs, The American Plan looks perfect. The backdrop is a simple ruched curtain printed with a Fall scene, and the mirrored floor of the stage reflects the light as if we were lakeside on a sunny day.
Taaffe is astonishing as the vulnerable but intelligent Lili. She bounds around with a girlish buoyancy, and every word is crisply enounced and perfectly delivered. Quick is just as good, her vowels low and elongated as she keeps her German accent just this side of comedy.
Allen-Gale’s Nick is wholesome and, as Lili herself says, a sort of tabula rasa on which she writes the future she wants. As an actor, he lets her character, and us, do this perfectly.
Greenberg’s script is nicely rhythmical and has some killer irony-laden lines and some effective pauses. The comedy, very New York Jewish, is never heavy-handed, and the emotional temperature is nicely set. Lili asks, “How old are you when you’re too old to start being happy?” A beat. “35,” deadpans Olivia.
Running at 2 hours 10 minutes, The American Plan feels neither rushed nor stinting on letting us get to know the characters well. The postscript is sad and satisfying as we see how easy it is to turn into the things we resent the most when young, and how lying, to others and to ourselves, very rarely gets us what we want.
What: The American Plan by Richard Greenberg
Where: St James Theatre, Palace Street, Victoria, London
Tickets: from £15
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