A tempest on home front in ‘Sussman Variations’
Review from The Boston Globe
In the world according to Charlie Sussman, it’s always about him.
Or so it seems to Charlie’s two adult children, who have brought plenty of emotional baggage to the Connecticut home their father shares with his second wife as they prepare to celebrate, or at least observe, Dad’s 75th birthday.
Family conflict is a much-charted piece of dramatic territory, and it can’t be said that Richard Schotter breaks a whole lot of new ground with The Sussman Variations, now at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre under the direction of Jeff Zinn.
Nonetheless, Variations is a generally admirable addition to a crowded category. While the play is overly schematic and its themes are too baldly stated, Schotter is very perceptive about the push and pull of relationships within families, that complex minuet in which power struggles surface out of nowhere and patterns of behavior are replicated from generation to generation.