Review: Frank's Home

Frank Lloyd Wright is widely regarded as America's most famous architect. The houses he designed are open, clean, aesthetic works of genius, but surprisingly unlivable. Though they were beautiful, it almost seems like Wright designed the houses with intentional disregard for the people whose lives would occur inside of them. Ironically, the same is true of Richard Nelson's play, Frank's Home. The piece is beautiful, but it's difficult to discern the human heart beating within it.

Frank's Home tells the story of just two days in the life of the architect, who is famous for his tumultuous personal life as well as his professional accomplishments. The story begins shortly after the completion of Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Wright is living in California, where his personal relationships are on a collision course. His two children, played by Maggie Siff and Jay Whittaker, are torn between love for their Wright and a heaping portion of resentment for the father who has been in and out of their lives, saddling them with as much scorn as affection throughout their youth and adulthood. Mary Beth Fisher plays Miriam Noel, Wright's drug-and-drink-addled second wife. Fisher is deliciously nervy and sharp-edged, making Miriam part Little Edie and part vicious viper, intoxicated by attention and terrifying when she doesn't get it.

Though the play is quite "talky," full of conversation about past events with little actual action, it's worth the price of a ticket to see Peter Weller sink his sharp teeth into this tour-de-force role. Weller uses his physicality and impressive-to-say-the-least command of the text to fully embody Frank Lloyd Wright, and it's actually difficult to keep in mind that this is, in fact, a performance and not the man himself. If Peter Weller and Bill Nighy did a play together, I'm pretty sure the theater would actually explode.

The rest of the performances are more varied in effectiveness. I've never seen Maggie Siff before, and she comes off in this as rather arrogant. Nelson's writing of her as part overbearing mother and part childlike daughter of the genius doesn't help, but it would have been nice to feel for her more, which might have been achieved with a more sympathetic, less agitated performance. Harris Yulin, on the other hand, is captivating in the role of Wright's longtime friend Louis, a man of few words but immense empathy and forgiveness. Someone should revive The Three Sisters and cast Harris Yulin as the aging Chebutikin.

I wouldn't reccommend Frank's Home to any occasional theatergoer. The text is simply so dry that it doesn't make for great storytelling, the way I think good theater should. However, there are some spot-on performances there, and missing Peter Weller's return to the stage would be a shame for any regular theatergoer to miss.

Frank's Home plays at Playwrights Horizons through February 18th.