‘The Balusters’ is a modern drawing room comedy that draws blood (Broadway review)
8 / 10
The Balusters is the latest in a series of contemporary stage comedies that are less interested in traditional drawing rooms than in drawing blood — skewering the foibles and hypocrisies of progressive lefties who also happen to be theater’s most reliable ticket buyers. It doesn’t stray into over-the-top horror fantasy like Tracy Letts’s The Minutes or the extremes of cultural appropriation like Larissa Fasthorse’s Thanksgiving Play. Nor does it boast a show-stopping comedic detour like the suburban parents’ Zoom meeting from hell in Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day. Lindsay-Abaire’s play more closely resembles the century-old Victorians of Vernon Place, boasting a sturdy frame on which the first-rate cast can express themselves with great craftsmanship. It doesn’t seek to push the genre into bold, modern directions — no glass-walled modern extension, thank you — but to embrace the virtues of a well-constructed contemporary satire. A gut renovation isn’t needed. The Balusters has good bones.
