SUPERIOR DONUTS

Expecting even the most talented playwright to follow up a Pulitzer Prize-winner with a second Prize-winning effort is like… well, expecting a ballplayer who has hit .380 one season to manage to bat .390 the next. (Never mind .400; no one has hit that high since Ted Williams in 1941.) It’s conceivable, of course, but virtually impossible.

An example: Tracy Letts, author of the 2008 Pulitzer winner, “August: Osage County”. Though his next play, “Superior Donuts” – currently at Broadway’s Music Box Theater – is not without its merits, it is far from superior as either drama or comedy. It makes for a diverting evening, to be sure, but is bound to fall considerably short of the accolades its predecessor enjoyed.

It’s certainly no fault of the actors. Michael Mckean, as the paunchy, pony-tailed proprietor of the coffee-and-donuts establishment of the title, does a fine job portraying grief, resignation, and regret; Jon Michael Hill, as the sassy young man he hires early in the first act, is clearly in possession of an enviable sense of comic timing (in his extended scenes with McKean – which form the basis of the play – he has most of, if not all, the best lines). Everybody else, from Yasen Peyankov as the Russian businessman next door who wants to buy the donut shop and turn it into something more profitable, to Cliff Chamberlain and Robert Maffia as the neighborhood goons who try to strong-arm the kid into making good on a gambling debt to their boss, does yeoman-like – and occasionally even hilarious – work.

But a plot twist in the second act calls into question the goons’ believability, and the last half of the play – as is the case with many comedies – just sort of peters out, even taking a dark and violent turn that left me yearning for the rat-a-tat repartee and whiz-bang one-liners of Act I.

In short: Tracy Letts’ latest may not be one of those yummy confections with powder on top and cream in the middle and enough calories to expand your waistline all by itself – it may be little more than one of those plain chocolate jobs with a thin layer of icing and nary a rainbow sprinkle – but it will still put a smile on your face (or most of it will, anyway)… and in today’s world, what’s wrong with that?

Theater Reviews by Stuart R. Brynien