No Way Around But Through

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.