The Oldest Boy. Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (Off Broadway). By Sarah Ruhl. Directed by Rebecca Taichman. With Celia Keenan-Bolger, James Yaegashi. Running time: 2hrs. One intermission.
The Oldest Boy: In brief
Sarah Ruhl, esteemed for her intelligent and whimsy-tinged work, returns to Lincoln Center with a new drama, in which an American woman (Celia Keenan-Bolger) and her Tibetan husband (James Yaegashi) must decide whether to allow their young son to be taken to India for training as a Buddhist master. Frequent Ruhl collaborator Rebecca Taichman directs.
The Oldest Boy: Theater review by Adam Feldman
The bowl of lentil soup that is Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy teems with a sense of its own humble virtue. It’s the theater of the friend who says that you should meditate—it will really center you!—and that, in fact, is what the woman known only as Mother (Keenan-Bolger) is trying to do at the start of the play, when two Tibetan monks (the charming James Saito and Jon Norman Schneider) show up at her door unexpectedly. It seems that her toddling son, Tenzin, born of her marriage to a chef, Father (Yaegashi), is the reincarnation of a great lama, and they would like to take him to India for training. As a supposed adherent of “attachment parenting,” can she bear to part with her boy?
Tactfully staged by Rebecca Taichman, The Oldest Boy is full of pretty pageantry, including lovely singing by Tsering Dorjee, but dampened by careful preciousness. Ruhl stunts the spiritual conflict by making it clear all along that the monks are correct about Tenzin; despite Keenan-Bolger’s sensitive pluck, even Mother’s love seems schematic. (Her son is represented by a placid-faced wooden puppet.) There is cleverness here, and even wisdom, but the subject calls for more than an East-and-West-meet-cute miracle play.—Theater review by Adam Feldman
THE BOTTOM LINE Ruhl’s play adopts an earnest cosmic pose.
[Note: An earlier version of this review misidentified the chorus member who sings. It is Tsering Dorjee, not Takemi Kitamura. We regret the error.]
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