A Miserable Family, Lashed by a Father’s Cruel Intentions. In Will Eno’s ‘The Open House,’ Dysfunctional Dynamics.
Charles IsherwoodMarch 3, 2014: Families have been falling apart on American stages ever since the country’s theater came to maturity back in the early decades of the last century. Fathers alienate sons. Wives excoriate husbands. Generation gaps yawn; alcohol plays the dual role of salve and fuel; lives are irrevocably destroyed. Right, you know the drill. But you’ve probably never seen a fractious family stage the uncanny disappearing act that takes place in The Open House, Will Eno’s new play, which opened on Monday night at Signature Theater. By the conclusion of Mr. Eno’s mordantly funny but disappointingly hollow comedy, the nuclear family onstage has been nuked into nonexistence, to be replaced, after a fashion, by a new clan that happens to look suspiciously like the old.
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