TT: The Ruhl thing

I review the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of The Language Archive, Julia Cho’s new play, in the Greater New York section of today’s Wall Street Journal. I found it a disappointment–for reasons that I didn’t expect. Here’s an excerpt.
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Much of “The Language Archive” has a shopworn ring, for it’s yet another tale of emotionally inhibited middle-class folk who lead Lives of Quiet Desperation. George (Matt Letscher) is a brainy linguist who can’t put his feelings for Mary (Heidi Schreck), his romance-starved wife, into words. This inspires Mary to pack her bags and catch the next train elsewhere. Meanwhile, we learn that Emma (Betty Gilpin), George’s lab assistant, has an unrequited crush on her boss that she can’t put into words. This inspires her to go out and study Esperanto, George’s favorite language. In due course Emma meets Mary, who has found her bliss by becoming a baker of artisanal breads…
Like many American playwrights, Ms. Cho pays the rent by writing for TV, and I wonder whether her work on “Big Love” might be nudging her away from the tough-mindedness one expects from a properly promising young playwright. It seems at least as likely, though, that she has succumbed to the baleful influence of Sarah Ruhl, whose stomach-turning brand of preciousness is the latest theatrical fashion and whose sticky stylistic fingerprints are all over “The Language Archive.” Indeed, it would appear that Ms. Cho (or Mark Brokaw, her director) has gone so far as to appropriate one particular piece of stage business from Ms. Ruhl’s “The Clean House,” a scene in which George teaches the audience how to conjugate the verb “love” in Esperanto while appropriate phrases are flashed on a screen suspended above the stage…
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The print version of the Journal‘s Greater New York section only appears in copies of the paper published in the New York area, but the complete contents of the section are available on line, and you can read my review of The Language Archive by going here.