Review by Adam Feldman
Danny and Roberta are the antiheroes of John Patrick Shanley’s 1984 romantic drama, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and they meet anti-cute. She sits alone in a nautical-themed Bronx bar late at night, picking at pretzels; he lingers at a nearby table, nursing a pitcher of beer, with bloody bruises on his face and fists. So begins a courtship that plays less like a pas de deux than a cage match. Roberta is strident, harsh and tortured by an ugly sexual past; Danny is pathologically violent and prone to beating people nearly to death. (Coworkers at his trucking company call him “the Beast.”) Both are a little crazy, and so lonely they can’t bear to be with anyone but themselves. So she invites him home for a night of make-believe romance.
“What's the matter? You don't like people?” asks Danny. “No. Not really,” Roberta answers. “Me neither,” he parries. You can’t blame them, in this case: We have seen other losers take their last shots at love, but seldom have they been so openly unpleasant. That we care about their pushme-pullyou affair is a testament to Shanley’s punchy writing and—in its current Off Broadway revival, tightly directed by Jeff Ward—to the fiercely intense performances of Christopher Abbott and Aubrey Plaza. Abbott’s Danny is a swarm of tics, appropriate for a man who feels traps in her own body; Plaza’s intensity doesn’t always match his—it’s her first stage role, and you can still feel her energy drop a bit after each line—but she makes Roberta’s defensiveness believable. Their connection has a religious quality: the one-night stand as confessional for the expiation of guilt and shame. Shanley digs in to find the hurt beneath their truculence, and by the end, the play is a little cute after all. It’s a bully romance.
Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. Lucille Lortel Theater (Off Broadway). By John Patrick Shanley. Directed by Jeff Ward. With Aubrey Plaza , Christopher Abbott. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
Follow Adam Feldman on X: @FeldmanAdam
Follow Time Out Theater on X: @TimeOutTheater
Keep up with the latest news and reviews on our Time Out Theater Facebook page
Danny and the Deep Blue Sea | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid
