No Way Around But Through
Scott Caan’s play, No
Way Around But Through, is a modern love story, though the audience never
sees the beginning or the end. The characters are stuck profoundly in the
middle, in the through if you will.
It’s a messy place, a confusing vortex where the only certainty to cling to is
where you’ve been because you sure as hell don’t have a clue where you’re going.
Caan has written a complex play that captures the sense of
“muddling through” that, for many of us, is everyday life.
The play begins with Jake (Scott Caan) and his “girlfriend
when I want one” Holly (Robyn Cohen) attempting to have a conversation about
Holly’s pregnancy and what that means to them separately, and as a couple. That
Jake is having this conversation, that he hasn’t already peeled a couple
hundred bucks out of his wallet to help with the abortion and bailed, is our
first clue that Jake is not simply a one-dimensional man whore. He’s
struggling. With what it means to be a man. With what it means to do the right
thing. With what it means to be better than he is.
Desperately Jake talks in circles, preferring to hide in the
abstract than deal with the reality of the situation. In doing so, he confuses
and perplexes Holly who just as desperately tries to navigate his linguistic
gymnastics. But eventually Jake zeroes in on the crux of the problem: Mommie
Dearest, a monster of a mother who has spouted so much poison over the years that
she has pretty much ruined him for all other women, and ruined all women for
him. Recognizing that Jake is so mired
in the past he cannot move forward, Holly gives up. She tells Jake he’s off the
hook and lets him go, though not before making it clear that he was not the
only one who had a crappy childhood, and hers sucked way more than his: Holly
was molested by her father for five years.
As Holly leaves, Jake turns and stands still, staring at the
road ahead. Thus begins the journey of the play, for neither Jake nor Holly can
simply walk away. I love the set design here. A crossroad on the stage with a
long empty road as a backdrop. It’s entirely fitting. Jake and Holly are literally
at the end of the road. The question is where do they go next?
As both Jake and Holly seek refuge with their best friends,
Frank (Val Lauren) and Rachel (Bre Blair) it’s clear that everyone’s life is in
crisis. Frank is in therapy, banned from doing the one thing in life that gives
him any pleasure: have sex. He’s miserable, convinced his therapist has ruined
his life beyond repair. But he asks the question of Jake that we all have for
him: how could you say such dumb, hurtful things to a woman who’s just told you
she’s carrying your child? He suggests it’s time for Jake to do something
different. To take a different perspective on his life, to look at it sideways,
and in so doing, finally change it for the better.
As for Rachel, she’s a self-professed hater of people and of
men. Her friendship with Holly is the only thing that makes any sense. She
doesn’t like Jake, and even though she tries to go against her better instincts
and lie to Holly in order to be the support she needs, in the end, she just
can’t.
Holly reveals herself the most in this scene. She loves
Jake. Hopelessly. And for no rational reason that she can put into words. And yet as she beats herself up for turning
Jake’s life upside down when, as she finally admits to Rachel, she doesn’t even
know for sure she’s pregnant, it becomes clear that Jake’s emotional damage is
a large part of the draw. To heal those wounds is her mission and it’s the
foundation of her crazy plan to find Jake’s mother and suss out the root of his
problems.
Enter Lulu (Melanie Griffith), who in the end, isn’t all
that different from the rest of them. If she’s a monster, then they are too.
Which is perhaps the point.
Jake has the same idea as Holly and so both end up in Lulu’s
living room where Holly takes her stand and forces mother and son to dredge up
the past, though not without resistance from both of them. Lulu verbally
batters Jake, and as Jake and Holly form an alliance against her, Jake finally
lets loose all the anger and hurt that has built up over the years. Progress is
made when at last Lulu relents. While she won’t apologize for the past, she
does acknowledge that her actions have had a negative effect on Jake’s life.
No one could be more surprised than Jake, who never
expected, and I think perhaps never wanted, his mother to offer this olive
branch. Blame is easy. Change is hard.
There is a moment of epiphany when Jake is railing against his mother, when he
reminds her that in the end, she was
the adult, he the child, and to fuck
with her issues. It was her responsibility
to grow up and be his mother.
The words bring Holly to a complete standstill and she
interrupts. She tells Jake he should listen to himself. But even though he ignores her, doesn’t
accept that he himself needs to shut up, grow up, and stop saying stupid things,
his body registers the weight of the moment. Emotions, long buried and denied,
overwhelm him and Jake becomes physically ill.
The end of Jake and Holly’s story is really another
beginning. As they face life as a couple, expecting a child (now a fact proven
by a pregnancy test), they acknowledge that they both need help by visiting a
therapist - together. They still don’t know exactly where they’re going or how
they’ll get there, but they believe they will, or at least they might, and it’s
the first step through to the other side.
Frank and Rachel also start to believe. They discover and
give in to newfound feelings for each other. That belief is all they have, and
for both self-admitted sex addicts, god only knows if it will be enough.
There are no happy endings here. You could say there’s no
proper ending at all. For all we know, despite their best efforts, Jake and
Holly could implode a week later. But when you think about it, the only real
ending is death. Everything else is transition and change. Or not.
If there is one thing this play taught me, it’s that Scott
Caan is a lover of language. One line in particular speaks to me. Lulu is telling
Jake that she likes Holly, and she stumbles over her words. She explains to
Jake that after they knew for sure that Holly was pregnant, she and Holly had a
“moment.” “But,” Lulu says. And then she stops herself, shakes her head and
says firmly, “not but, and…and I like
her.” It is an amazing thing how one tiny word can hold such an abundance of
meaning.
And it’s not just words themselves, but also their sounds
and rhythms and flows that seem to fascinate Caan. If the actors weren’t so
captivating to watch I could have closed my eyes and simply listened to them
speak.
Across gender lines, Caan’s characters are honest, raw, and
real. For some reason, it made me giddy to realize he writes for women as well
as he writes for men. He’s also funny as hell. I wish I had the play in front
of me so I could quote from it. Alas I
don’t.
What can I say about Scott Caan? His comedic timing is
impeccable. In role after role Caan proves he can easily run a gamut of emotion.
His ability to show vulnerability is one of things I like most about him as an
actor. It’s no different here. Holly doesn’t have to tell us why she loves him,
we can see why for ourselves. One of his most memorable moments in the play is when
he thinks he’s having a heart attack. Huddled on the couch, swaddled in a
blanket, voice reedy and trembling, he’s a hot mess. And he’s hilarious. Making
you want give him a shake and a reassuring hug at the same time.
Melanie Griffith is sublime. She completely embodies her
character. Lulu is infuriating and caustic and critical. She has a biting wit
and wounds that have never healed. Jake may think she’s a horror, but Griffith
makes her human. We see her fragility. We see her hurt. We see her guilt, even
if she can’t admit it. And she has a palpable connection to Caan’s Jake. After
mother and son have begun to take tentative steps towards each other, there is
a moment when Lulu reaches out, touches Jakes chest and says, “I feel you. I
want you to know that I feel you.” It was an amazing thing to see and left me
with a desire to see Caan and Griffith do much more work together in the
future.
Robyn Cohen is a delight as Holly. I think her best moments
are in some of the smaller scenes, with Rachel at the beginning, and the first
time she meets Lulu. Her body language is much more pronounced than either Caan
or Griffith. It’s a difference perhaps due to varying degrees of stage
experience, but the contrast is slightly jarring. Cohen’s Holly is likeable and
loving, sweet without being cloying but is still able to put her foot down when
it needs doing. She makes you pull for her, and I wanted Holly to be pregnant
simply because that’s what Holly wanted.
Val Lauren and Bre Blair are magnificent. They’re the
sidekicks, but I cared about Frank and Rachel every bit as much as I cared
about Jake, Holly and Lulu. Lauren is
utterly charming, Blair completely natural and real. They have wonderful
chemistry with Caan and Cohen, and an obvious connection with each other. I’d
seen a few performances from both of them before this play, but none of those
roles offered the range of emotions they got to play with here. Now I want to
see more of these two engaging actors.
As someone who had the immense luck to be in the right place
at the right time to see a Scott Caan play with such a wonderfully talented
cast, all I can say is that I hope you have the same luck I did. No Way
Around But Through is a play worth seeing, and I’m looking forward to Mr.
Caan’s next work.
I’ll end with a personal anecdote. Though my roommate, and
one of my best friends, who saw this play with me disagrees with my take on
Caan’s “wordiness.” (I’m pretty sure she was itching to take her red pen to the
script), she also was profoundly affected by the subject matter. I came home
from work one day and we ran into each other in the kitchen. I asked her how
her day was, and she said it was horrible. She and her sister had gotten into a
fight with their mother. And in the course of that fight, she’d blurted out
almost verbatim Jake’s rant about being an adult and taking responsibility for
your actions. Her mother hadn’t been receptive, which led to a discussion about
both of our mothers, the damages they’d inflicted and our need for closure. My
mother died when I was twenty-two, with all those gaping wounds still there
between us. But as we talked about it, what became clear was this: no matter
where you’ve been, if you’re going to move forward, you can’t go under it, you
can’t go around it. There is no way around but through. The trick is to keep
moving.
