Once on Saturday Night Live the recovery-movement habitue Stuart Smalley declared that one American artist should be forced to introduce himself like this: "Hi, I'm Norman Rockwell and I PAINT LIES!" Certainly there is a paradigm of the perfect American family that is represented in Rockwell's work. Latter-day saints are especially susceptible to the sort of idealization of the family. Many of us know, however, that the reality of those we love and live with is often very different from the sanitized vision of Rockwell and the old Saturday Evening Post. One LDS playwright's attempt to deal with a family as it is (rather than through sentimental fantasies) is Eric Samuelsen's new play Family, now playing at Brigham Young University.

Samuelsen's play delivers an unusual level of insight and candor about the psychology of "ordinary" Mormons. And how that individual psychology affects in an organic way the other members of the family, and how that family is shaped by--and in turn helps shape--a larger Mormon culture. One observer of the church (I think Harold Bloom) once said that in Mormonism the basic unit of salvation is not the individual, but the family. I wouldn't go that far, but Samuelsen's play certainly illustrates the central place of the family in Mormon thought.

First off: I really do dislike the title. It sounds generic and nondescript. One realizes that the play is trying to explore the archetypal family and what many families have in common, but come on. Let's show a little imagination, people. This is just carping, I know, because I have absolutely no suggestions for a better title.

In many ways the crafty playwright has anticipated many of the criticisms that could be leveled at his play. Most of the characters are awfully self-absorbed? The youngest, teen-age daughter confesses that they are a "champion bunch of navel gazers" and contemplates a future career actually helping other people. Much of the dialogue seems sitcom-glib and the action slick and tragedy-free? Another daughter admits they joke around in order not to deal with painful things. And a crucial plot-point involves another daughter's romantic attraction to a religiously antagonistic non-Mormon. Just as you begin to mutter to yourself she should grow a pair, the mom more decorously suggests that her daughter should "grow a backbone", stand up for herself, engage the guy in a real exchange of ideas, and see what happens. So in a way, criticism of this play is a losing proposition because they very clever Samuelsen is already two steps ahead of you.

Family is billed as a comedy, and it is very funny (although there are times when it teeters on the edge of anguish.) William Morris, on his blog "A Motley Vision," wrote that it sounds like Gilmore Girls in style. I too am crazy about The Girls, and that turns out to be a pretty good guess about Family. It's amazing how you can actually find yourself in deep waters even though you've been laughing all the while. The characters in the play: dad Craig Hull is a tax accountant who gave up his dream of being a history professor. Wonderfully played by Ward Wright in this production, he is the sort of gentle paterfamilias you often encounter in Mormon families. He engages his kids in a nurturing, bookish way. He is a man of real thoughtfulness. At one point, after reading Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel he begins to rethink his ideas about the historicity of the Book of Mormon. How marvelous it is, he says, like B.H. Roberts to start from scratch and reconstruct your testimony. "It's a blessing; it's a feast." His humility, kindness, and intellect are the way he connects.

Mom Melinda Hull, played with a fine edge by Tracey Wooley, has a different role to play that is in a sense forced on her by her husband's gentleness. She's the family hardass; she's the one who "gets her hands dirty" and makes things work. While Craig says "Whenever they're ready", Melinda directly attacks crises. As a result she feels she comes in second with her children. They love her, but they don't like her that much. She feels like she lives "in a houseful of strangers" and prays in one shattering scene that she will die first so she won't be stuck alone with the kids. But Melinda becomes the catalyst in a crucial later scene about saving one of her daughters.

Samuelsen says his play is about a normal LDS family surviving "one very bad weekend." Three adult children descend at once upon the home having experienced significant failure in important life passages. Son Jack (played by Slate Holmgren) has left his LDS mission after eight months, after experiencing "headaches, high blood pressure, eczema on his hands, arms and thighs, rectal bleeding because of colitis"; a whole panoply of stress-related symptoms. He is obviously disabled by an anxiety disorder. He is a deeply spiritual, motivated young man but the indifference of the world to his message has hurt him badly. He frets about his reception upon his return by his friends and fellow church members. He poignantly worries whether he can be considered an R.M. just like the others who have served a mission, like his older sister Deanne. Jack could represent the zealous, emotional side of Mormonism that can get out of balance an run faster than it has strength.

Sister Ashley Hull Jarvis (well played by Hollie Bellows) is one of the most sharply etched fictional LDS characters I've ever encountered. You've met this girl a thousand times, but this may be the first time you've ever known her. A self-described "blond air-head" whose bra size is bigger than her I.Q. (she believes), she is fleeing from a marriage to an outdoorsy guy in the wilds of Missoula, Montana. Ashley relies on histrionic exaggerations bordering on lies to maintain her fragile grip on things. She has very little self value; it's hinted that her husband may be emotionally if not physically abusive. In a searing monologue she says she goes to church because the gospel seems like a good way of life, but she doesn't believe a word of its truth claims; no way did an angel visit Joseph Smith or give him any golden plates. In her self-deception and nihilism, her bondage to notions of female "prettiness", she is obviously in a very bad place indeed.

Deanne Hull (smartly played by Renny Richmond) has abruptly quit her master's degree program in the history of mathematics at Brown University in Rhode Island. She is the most evasive of the kids about her problems. Jack worries that she can't feel the influence of the spirit and accuses her of having only an "intellectual testimony." She replies that an intellectual testimony is about all she has left. Because of "peer pressure" she has experimented with a little weed. And she has fallen half in love with a left-wing, socially "progressive" activist admirer of Derrida and Foucault who wouldn't even talk to her until she told him that religious-right evangelicals hate Mormons just as much as they hate him. She has come to think that she, a little Mormon girl from San Jose, CA is inadequate next to the great big intellectual giants of the Ivy League. By comparison, she "believes in nothing" and finds it hard to get out of bed in the morning. (It was at this point I started shifting in my seat and murmuring about how she should get a pair.)

Youngest sister Carla (realistically played by Michelle L. Hales) is still in high school and lives at home. The wise-cracking kid sister is a bit over familiar by now (for example see Rory Gilmore) but here she is a welcome respite in letting the air out of her siblings' angst and calling them on their more tortured rationalizations. You could say she takes after her mother in her take-no-prisoners attitude.

One of the most bracing things about Family is its sometimes startling honesty about potentially controversial matters. Ashley's forthright confession of disbelief, for one thing, is something that has probably never been heard on a BYU stage before. Ditto Deanne's story of smoking dope and her discovery of a very different social and intellectual landscape outside the church. Likewise Jack's despair over his aborted mission; Melinda's disenchantment with her children; and even dad Craig's discouragement over the sudden triple family crisis and his own conceptual re-examination of the Book of Mormon. Samuelsen's witty repartee masks some genuine tension. If drama by definition if conflict, the this is a drama.

Classical comedy involves happy endings and the resolution of incongruities. I suppose the contemplation of inescapable ambiguities is what tragedy is all about. But comedy asserts the ambiguities aren't as meaningful or important in the end as love, compassion, or just sheer human playfulness. Carla compares living in a family to assembling a puzzle (a form of playfulness.) "We work to solve the puzzle. The greatest puzzle of all. Family." Or as someone once said, you fill up the holes in my head, and I'll fill up the holes in yours. That's Samuelsen's answer to the inescapable ambiguities of life. The family as an organic whole, where we work on perfecting each other. And the messiness of the process provides plenty of laughter. I wonder if Samuelsen has read Jonathan Franzen's wonderful comic novel The Corrections. (Now that would be a great title for this play if it weren't already taken.) There's a similar plot and similar themes; three messed-up adult children assemble at he family home in search of an epiphany, of revelation about their histories and challenges. In Franzen's novel there is only the most tentative of resolutions. In Samuelsen's play there are in fact things that can be done: a father's priesthood blessing; a frank mother-daughter talk that breaks new ground between them; steadfast emotional support and love in seeking help with mental health issues. A couple of visiting teachers (who make two visits in two days!) stop in and are initially as annoying and pointless as the visits sometimes are in real life: but eventually they provide some much needed perspective and a useful job tip. In other words, real help in a time of need. One of the distinctions made in Family is between society and community. Society can be indifferent and even cruel; but community is a place "where everybody knows your name", with common values and similar mercies. The church is a vital community; the family is a smaller and even more special community.

In its own way, Family is a landmark in Mormon drama in its willingness to confront agonizing issues. As Melinda tells Deanne, if you don't like the way things are, whose responsibility do you think it is to change things? As Mormons, we know that life is not just randomness, but a continuing crisis that requires engagement. No monastaries or escape through cheap grace for us. As Samuelsen says about his characters: "They become unsettled and its good for them. We can't ever settle. Life won't let us."

Grade: A-

R.W. Rasband
March 6, 2005