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Brooklyn Laundry’s Drama Has Been Worn to Death
John Patrick Shanley’s play needs a little starch.
At the Lortel last fall, Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott followed in the footsteps of so many drama students before them in his youthful, bruising Bronx romance Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, first performed in 1983. Fran ( SNL ’s Cecily Strong, in her second stage outing after Signs of Intelligent Life) walks into her Bushwick wash-and-fold with a light bag of clothes — she’s had a recent breakup — and falls into a conversation with the owner, Owen (David Zayas). Lozano, stuck in bed, tries to accommodate by going way too big, whereas Syglowski (whom I’m giving a Purple Heart for doing this and Theresa Rebeck’s similarly under-excavated Dig), trying to pin down a character who just keeps spouting new exposition, comes off as erratic and confused.
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