Good Time Charlie - The Public Theater ★★★

In the program note to Good Time Charlie, the new play by Ryan J. Haddad at The Public, Artistic Director Oskar Eustis writes that Good Time Charlie is “a kind of mirror-image” of Long Day’s Journey Into Night; rather than destroying one another, family members lift each other up.

It’s a sweet thought about a sweet play, but therein also lies the play’s largest obstacle: the need for more drama. Haddad wants to stay true to his family’s stories about him and his uncle Charlie, whose experiences coming out as gay men were drastically different. But real life rarely translates neatly into compelling theatre, and this is one of those cases.

Fortunately, the show doesn’t shy away from theatricality. Haddad plays himself, and all the other actors — playing family members, biological and chosen — never find themselves in a Pirandellian crisis; if they don’t like the way a moment is written, they break the fourth wall and tell Haddad, the playwright, so. But even those brief moments of conflict are handled gently and resolved almost instantly, as if the show needs to apologize for not being the polar opposite of a haunting evening with the Tyrones.

Not helping matters: some Theatre 101 basics are missing. Too many performances feel underpowered. Line endings are swallowed, cues aren’t being picked up quickly enough, and the occasional line is being delivered upstage rather than cheated out, or isn’t projected well enough to be heard past the first few rows. It’s perplexing to witness these issues on a Public Theater stage, but there they are.

The talented Haddad deservedly earned considerable critical acclaim for his solo autobiographical shows Dark Disabled Stories and Hold Me in the Water, and it’s exciting to see him now working on a larger scale. But next time, he needs to bring on the battles.