Some say the opposite of helicopter parenting is free-range parenting, when you loosen the bonds on your kids just a bit, now and then, and let them explore the world on their own. But below that there’s psychos-in-absentia parenting, both mom and dad just disappear for a couple days or more, leaving the kids to fend for themselves.
It’s the latter category of parenting that’s up for discussion in Make Believe by Bess Wohl, now at Dobama Theatre. It strains to be a heart-stopping then heart-rending story of four kids who grew up distorted in one way or another by a psycho-parent episode in their younger years. But due to a script that insists on telling us too much too soon, this faux-mystery is mostly a formulaic rendition of a scary experience that offers few theatrical jolts and even less insight.
In a bold move, the playwright divides the 90-minute play into two sections. In the first part we see the four siblings, junior high age and younger, killing time in their toy-stuffed attic playroom, waiting for their parents to arrive home. In the second part, we see three of the four kids roughly 30 years later, now all grown up and tending to the neuroses implanted by their parents.
This bifurcation of the storyline promises much more than it delivers. Even the best efforts of Dobama’s splendid director Nathan Motta can’t manage to turn this “Pee-wee’s Playhouse from Hell” into anything beyond a run-of-the-mill family dysfunction drama.
During the first half of the show, we see the kids, played by age-appropriate child actors, teasing and comforting each other as they await their parents’ arrival. They listen with a combination of anticipation and horror when the phone answering machine fields calls there are knocks on the front door.
Trouble is, this potentially rich vein of childhood angst is punctured since the playwright gives the older kids Chris (Arthur Atwell) and Kate (Kaitlyn Bartholomew) plenty of exposition about the parent’s respective failings—dad was a womanizer, often away on “business trips,” and mom had serious mental issues for which she had been hospitalized at times.
Thus, we understand the problem, and that’s not a smooth move if you want to develop fear and mystery. Meanwhile the younger children Addie (Claire Zalevsky) and Carl (Jonah McMurdy) fill their time wrapped up in their own particular fantasies.
As a group, these child actors give it their all. But they aren’t really experienced enough (nor should they be) to deliver nearly an hour of live ensemble stage performance all by themselves. Even the best kid actors in film get multiple takes to get it right, and that’s for seconds or maybe a couple minutes at a time, not 50 minutes.
In the somewhat shorter second half, adult actors take over the show as they convene in their old playroom, drawn back home by the death of one of their siblings. We observe how these three have dealt with the pain of their formative years, while each of them conveniently displays behaviors that their younger selves just enacted a half-hour before. It’s all a bit too tidy.
As the grownups, the excellent actors Courtney Brown, Anjanette Hall and Paul Hurley do what they can with the script, which devolves into soapy reflections on their monstrous parents and the memories of the dearly departed. They are joined by an adult friend of the deceased, played by Andrew Pope with a delicate sense of balance as he tries to navigate this still-hurting family.
Ultimately, Wohl’s title for this overwritten play is all too accurate. It does indeed feel like “make-believe,” as in a story that lacks the snap, surprise and stakes of real life.
Make Believe
Through October 29 at Dobama Theatre, 2340 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, 216-932-3396, dobama.org.
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This article appears in Best of Cleveland 2023.
