There often comes a point, however, when even visionaries must confront reality, and Theresa Rebeck’s new play, “Seared,” takes place at exactly that moment.
While Harry busies himself creating edible masterpieces — scenic designer Tim Mackabee’s working replica of a restaurant kitchen on MCC Theater’s smaller stage allows Esparza to actually cook — his business partner, Mike (David Mason, a master of the harried slow burn), is worried.
Two and a half years into their restaurant’s existence, the place is still on shaky financial ground, and the chef’s insistence on the finest, most rarefied ingredients does not help. So when New York magazine unexpectedly hails Harry’s scallop dish, Mike brings in a consultant, Emily (Krysta Rodriguez), to help turn the mollusks into foodie bait and monetize the hell out of them.
The problem is that Harry has lost interest in the scallops and pulled them from the menu. It’s as if Celine Dion had decided to stop singing “My Heart Will Go On” right after it became a hit.
Stuck in the middle is the amiable waiter, Rodney (W. Tré Davis), who sympathizes with Harry’s ambitions but also knows that there’s a real world out there, waiting for its order.
Rebeck has often considered the tensions generated by art-making, ambition and money, whether it was the maneuvers of aspiring writers and their mentor in “Seminar,” a stage manager’s attempt to wrangle high-maintenance actors in “The Understudy,” or the creation of a Broadway musical in the television series “Smash.”
Harry himself is not so different from the Sarah Bernhardt of her 2018 Broadway play “Bernhardt/Hamlet,” both chafing against expectations and fueled by exalted chaos of their own making.
But people’s self-dramatizing behavior does not necessarily make them interesting. And for the most part, everybody in “Seared” motors forward on a straight track: You get a pretty clear idea of who they are very early on, and they behave accordingly the whole way through.
Rebeck does allow for a modicum of ambiguity, but does not make much of it. Harry may have high standards when it comes to cooking but his ethics are shakier: Even though he’s on salary, he takes half of Rodney’s tips. Mike is obsessed with the bottom line but still tries to do right by his staff — he’s certainly tolerated Harry’s shenanigans long enough.
As for Emily, she is not just an operator with a publicist’s knack for saying exactly what people want to hear. She also appears to genuinely admire what our maestro of the stovetop puts on the plate. (The role makes good use of Rodriguez’s hard-edge hummingbird energy.)
The shading does not go deep, however — the show’s title is spot on in that respect — and really, the people onstage are not all that complicated.
To perhaps distract from both the play’s mechanical construction — a looming critic’s visit upsets the restaurant’s shaky equilibrium; lessons are learned — the production by Moritz von Stuelpnagel (“Hand to God”) goes all out on realism and energy.
The fresh smells wafting from the stage are mouthwatering, and when Esparza opens the second act by creating a new salmon concoction, the extended wordless scene works the same way a flashy number would in a musical.
The star has great fun playing the kind of guy tough enough to sport a tattoo of pig parts, and sensitive enough to experience rapture while slicing an onion with a handcrafted Japanese knife. More important, he resists the temptation to make Harry more sympathetic than he should be.
But as Rebeck shifts into even higher gear for a farcical, “Fawlty Towers”-esque episode and a predictable dramatic confrontation, the characters still feel as undernourished as the play is overcooked.
—
Production Notes:
‘Seared’
Through Dec. 1 at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, Manhattan; 646-506-9393, mcctheater.org. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.
This article originally appeared in
.