Waiting to Connect in Levittown in ‘The Babylon Line’
Ben BrantleyDecember 5, 2016: Finding a voice as a writer often involves much throat clearing — false starts, rough drafts, crazy riffs and paralyzing stretches of analysis. Such self-consciousness occupies a lot (and I mean a lot) of stage time in “The Babylon Line,” Richard Greenberg’s new play, which opened on Monday at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. In a way, that’s appropriate. Mr. Greenberg’s latest work unfolds within a creative-writing class, taught by a not-so-young man, Aaron Port (Josh Radnor), who has an affliction he would really prefer you not define as writer’s block. Call him instead, he insists rather winningly, “a patient worker.” Unfortunately, authorial throat clearing — the kind that can try a theatergoer’s patience — seems to be the style as well as the subject of this unresolved comedy. Though it offers choice examples of the off-kilter lyricism that is Mr. Greenberg’s signature, “The Babylon Line” feels like a gifted writer’s notebook, stuffed with beguiling phrases and ideas still waiting to cohere into a compelling shape.
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