The Critics · At the Theatre
Three Beach Chairs, One Century
A revival at the Asolo trims the set until only the argument remains.
The play, first produced in 1962, is about a family that has, over the course of a hundred years, argued about the same three beach chairs. In the original production, the set included the chairs, a stretch of sand, a dune, and a house. In the Asolo Repertory Theatre's new revival, which opened Thursday, the set consists of the three chairs. There is no sand, no dune, and no house.
The effect is startling. The play, freed from its scenery, turns out to be a very good play about the way inheritances work. Everything that in the original production was carried by the set is now carried by the actors, who, without the sand under their feet, have to invent it. They do. By the end of the second act, I could smell the salt.
The director, a woman named Priya Sundaram, told me afterward that she had cut the set as an experiment. 'I wanted,' she said, 'to see what the play was really about.' What the play is really about, it turns out, is three chairs, and the people who could not, in a hundred years, agree about who was supposed to sit in them.