End of the line
The Last Schwartz laughs at familial dysfunction – and looks nervously at the future of humankind.

By Robert Avila

THE END OF the holidays brings to a close those thankfully brief reunions with the family – annual rituals that breed, among many things, mixed feelings about the efficacy of the whole enterprise. If the phrase "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" serves as a ready formula for such ambivalence, playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer's comedy The Last Schwartz would just as well make the sum zero and call it a day.

In Marin Theatre Company's engaging West Coast premiere, four Schwartz siblings gather at the family home in upstate New York for the Yahrzeit, a Jewish mourning ritual, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of their father's death. Since this problematic patriarch's demise, daughter Norma (Sharon Lockwood) has appointed herself keeper of family tradition – thus taking the role of great big domineering sourpuss in the eyes of the others. By contrast, older brother Herb (Michael Tucker) prefers a more laissez-faire outlook (especially for himself), while kid brother Gene (Darren Bridgett) flits in nonchalantly from his respectably debauched life as the director of TV commercials. Finally, in a corner, hunched obsessively over his telescope and noticed only infrequently, sits Simon (Mark Phillips), the painfully sensitive autistic brother desperate to recede from this world by becoming absorbed in others.

Along for the ride are Herb's lonely and garrulous wife, Bonnie (Jill Eikenberry), and Gene's girlfriend, Kia (Megan Towle), ambitious starlet of his "Fat No More" ad and a quintessential Venice Beach shiksa. Meanwhile, after many years of marriage, Bonnie and Herb have yet to produce an heir, and the optimistically named Gene seems equally destined to fail – undercutting Norma's eagerness to see the paternal line continue. This untenable clan flays itself raw in an often mordantly funny series of confrontations and disclosures, all of which point to the end of the hereditary line for the Schwartzes.

The audience may consider that just as well. Bonnie still can't understand why the conjoined twins on Oprah's show – the television superstar points out the silver lining in life's grotesqueries – are happier and better adjusted than the Schwartz family members. In truth, there's little evidence things are any different for the family whose members actually overlap. Norma's cry for them all to behave like a real family receives an unimpeachable reply from Herb: "This is what a family is."

If not always original in design, The Last Schwartz is fresh in execution, thanks to some winning dialogue and director Lee Sankowich's sure handling of an especially fine ensemble cast who, headed up by Eikenberry and Tucker (the acting couple probably best known for their work on L.A. Law), breathe life into basically familiar character types and situations.

At the same time, The Last Schwartz, with its theme of familial and social decay, wants to be more than just a comedy. Here it is less compelling but, even with a big fat nod to Chekhov at the end, rarely heavy-handed. And Laufer's meditation on a quirky Jewish family from New York throws up some interesting contrasts. Kia – who never had a family, having been instead the collective responsibility of a flaky network of beach communards back in Los Angeles – seems to have no inhibitions whatsoever. And her bubble-headed ingenuousness (played with zest by Towle) also allows her a perspicuity regarding the emotional truths in others. She's the counterpart to Simon, the other of the play's two "seers." Where Kia focuses on individuals (and seems lost with anything more abstract), Simon takes in whole planets while the people around him remain "fuzzy." Simon's retreat from human contact (manifested in his growing blindness) has its own counterpart in his certain knowledge that the world as a whole is winding down, and that it's time to stake a patch of ground on the Moon or Mars – providing a secular echo of an Old Testament prophet, warning his unheeding family (the whole human enterprise) to "prepare for the end."

'The Last Schwartz' runs through Feb. 8. Tues. and Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m. (also Thurs/29, 1 p.m.; Feb. 7, 2 p.m.); Wed., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 7 p.m., Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley. $28-$45 (Tues., pay what you can). (415) 388-5208.