Dinner Is Also a Sport
Charles IsherwoodJanuary 16, 2015: The holidays and all the fraught togetherness they can bring are now in the rearview mirror. But if you’re still smarting over that unkind word from a brother-in-law, or a passive-aggressive takedown from Mom or Dad, some solace may be found by attending a performance of A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes, a quirky comedy by Kate Benson that cleverly transforms an extended family’s Thanksgiving dinner into a fiercely fought competitive sport. Trust me, any tensions that arose between your siblings or cousins during the course of a family assembly will pale in comparison with the peculiar, ultimately macabre goings-on in Ms. Benson’s dark farce about the ego-devouring aspects of family life. The buffed wooden floor of the set, by Sara C. Walsh, resembles a basketball court, although the traditional markings are replaced by a more dizzying design. We appear to be inside a gym of some kind, but one equipped with a skybox, where two announcers — Ben Williams and Hubert Point-DuJour — provide play-by-play and color commentary on the action below them. In the course of the play’s 75-minute running time, their near-constant annotation of the interactions in a large family will surreally slide among images from football, baseball, racing, golf and other sports. Dashing around the course, or the field, are three middle-aged sisters with names drawn from a vintage Betty Crocker dessert cookbook. Cheesecake (Brooke Ishibashi) is the host of this year’s feast, and so the responsibility of preparing most of the meal devolves onto her nervous shoulders. Her sisters, Cherry Pie (Heather Alicia Simms) and Trifle (Nina Hellman), help with arranging the furniture — whether the table will fit all the guests becomes an issue of serious contention — and also pitch in when Cheesecake is overwhelmed.
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