A Controversial Play Asserts the Humanity of Sex Offenders
The four men who live together in Downstate, Bruce Norris’s new play, are—for the most part—likable. Endearing, even. Fred (played in the National Theatre’s current production in London by Francis Guinan), a septuagenarian piano teacher in an electric wheelchair, is amiable, folksy, and seemingly naive (he’s described in the play’s text as “not unlike Fred Rogers”). Dee (K. Todd Freeman), who’s a former choreographer in his 60s, is droll and theatrical, but has a gentle manner when he helps take care of Fred. Felix (Eddie Torres), a mechanic in his 40s, is quiet and unassuming. Gio (Glenn Davis), the 30-something loudmouth of the group, is the most grating, sniping at the others and asserting his own superiority, but there’s something poignant about the fact that he’s trying to teach the isolated Felix to play bridge.
None of this is accidental. Norris, who’s structured this play as deliberately and meticulously as his, wants audiences to like these men, to sympathize with them, to connect with their prosaic rituals and petty squabbles, before he exposes the fullness of what they’ve done.
