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City
children often make the least convincing comic characters. Writers tend to treat them, and
the actors to play them, as miniature adults. You've seen them dozens of times in films,
plays and certainly on television: articulate as college philosophy professors,
sophisticated as Parisian couturiers, these children are often figments of the imagination
of grown-ups who have not spent enough time with real ones.
So it was a relief to encounter Constance, a 13-year-old who acts, duh, 13 years old in
James Ryan's chipper romantic comedy, The Young Girl and the Monsoon.
In a struggle for control with her divorced father, Constance rolls her eyes and acts out
shamelessly and puts everything he says or does in the category of either "cool"
or "queer."
Mr. Ryan fills with some genuine people. Hank is changeable, distant and caring all at the
same time, a good father who nevertheless disappears for long spells on assignment and
feels guilty about it. The play turns on his effort to find enough room in his life for
both Erin and Constance and achieve the balance and maturity that have eluded him.
The Young Girl and the Monsoon has an amiable charm and offbeat humor that distinguishes
it from formulaic relationship comedies. But what sets it apart most successfully is the
detail work that has gone into the writing of a believable tug-of-war between a father and
daughter.
Excerpted from the New York Times review
By Peter Marks |
