Theater: Vineyard Theatre / 108 East 15th Street, New York, NY, 10003
Synopsis:
Nicky Silver's seventh new play to open at The Vineyard, The Lyons is an outrageously funny and stirring work about a family grappling with the death of its patriarch. When Ben Lyon's wife, Rita, and their grown children gather to say goodbye, they learn that despite being a family, each of them is utterly isolated. Afraid of closeness and afraid of solitude, Ben's death may be a catalyst that propels them into foreign territory - human connection.
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October 11, 2011: Do we have to spend another evening with her? You know, that smothering, belittling Jewish mother with the perfect manicure who seems to come round at least once a theater season to make her grown children feel smaller and less developed than embryos. Can’t we just pretend we ate some bad gefilte fish or something, and stay home?
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October 11, 2011: Nicky Silver's sharp-tongued and cold-hearted farce "The Lyons" follows an American family doused in dysfunction - a theme covered so thoroughly that just typing the words makes my eyelids heavy.
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October 11, 2011: Rita Lyons (Lavin), a Jewish matron from Connecticut, attends her husband’s deathbed with vulturine patience in the first act of Nicky Silver’s scab-picking new comedy. Long acrimonious, her marriage to Ben (Latessa) has moved to open warfare now that he has no time for niceties; she can hardly wait—though waiting is all she can do—for Ben to finally die, so she can feed on his spoils and move on. Speaking candid cruelties in a nasal caw, she bares her teeth in the shape of a smile.
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October 11, 2011: Though the title is a bit obvious and the theme is one the playwright has tackled numerous times before, Nicky Silver's "The Lyons," at the Vineyard Theatre, is an uproariously dark cartoon of a play, full of belly laughs and stark insights. Since the 1990s, Silver has been employing the dysfunctional-family template, usually with monstrous, narcissistic mothers, absent or distant fathers, unbearably lonely gay sons, and barely functional daughters. The characters' neuroses lead them to commit insane acts like stalking strangers, kidnapping, pedophilia, and even murder. "The Food Chain," "Pterodactyls," "The Eros Trilogy," "Fit to Be Tied," "Beautiful Child," and numerous others employ some variation on this basic setup.
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October 12, 2011: Cancer and alcoholism are just two of the unlikely topics for Nicky Silver's brand of excoriating humor in The Lyons, now at The Vineyard Theatre. Directed with a keen eye for detail by Mark Brokaw, and featuring a superlative ensemble led by Linda Lavin, the play has audiences howling during its first act and, despite a few stumbles in its second half, may even provoke a tear or two from theatergoers before the curtain falls.
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