At once charmingly old-fashioned and bracingly fresh, the new play “Grand Horizons” — now playing on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theater — recalls any number of dysfunctional family comedies, from “Crimes of the Heart,” to “Home for the Holidays,” to “Everybody Loves Raymond.” A group of lovably eccentric characters gather to air out long-buried grievances, and we watch the screws turn.
Yet as written by the gifted Bess Wohl (whose terrific “Small Mouth Sounds” played off-Broadway a few years ago), the emotions cut unexpectedly deep here, and the jokes keeping skittering off like pinballs in all sorts of unexpected (and hilarious) directions.
The cards get laid out in the opening scene, when after settling down to what appears to be a routine dinner, Nancy (Jane Alexander, in her first Broadway appearance in more than twenty years) announces to her long-married husband Bill (James Cromwell, of “Babe” and “Succession” fame) that she wants a divorce.
Bill’s alarmingly casual response: “All right.”
Enter Nancy and Bill’s adult sons, Brian (Michael Urie, the wonderful star of the recent “Torch Song” revival), a high school theater teacher with his own attachment issues, and Ben (Ben McKenzie, of “The O.C” and “Gotham”), with a pregnant wife (Ashley Park, who earned a Tony nomination for “Mean Girls” ) and questionable communication skills. Both men are desperate for their parents to quit this nonsense and carry on with their marriage. The bickering commences. Long-buried secrets quickly bubble to the surface.
Whether Nancy or Bill actually wants this divorce — or just wants to be heard by the other — remains intriguingly open to debate.
As rote as all of this might have played out, Wohl manages to avoid every possible pitfall. For one thing, she’s given us real characters, not easy types, and manages to write them with sincere affection but also merciless scrutiny. One early scene, in which Michael brings home a young man he’s met at a bar (Maulik Pancholy) seems poised for farce — which aging parent will discover them in flagrante? — but instead turns dark and wistful. Michael behaves horribly; his would-be beau storms out. And we realize that, in one deft scene, Wohl has anatomized this entire man’s life, as an out-but-not-quite proud man who has no idea how to be in a relationship.
The cast, rounded out by Priscilla Lopez, as Bill’s new “friend” Carla, is excellent, though it’s perhaps no surprise that the luminous Alexander owns the show, putting forth a tremendously affecting portrait of a woman who insists that she be a “whole person” to her sons and husband. Her work opposite Cromwell is a particular delight, as the two of them convey the cacophony and the synchronicity — the bitter and the sweet — of a longstanding relationship that’s gone untended for too long.
Unfolding on Clint Ramos’ perfectly designed set — the brightly lit, blandly boxy living room of an independent living facility in a planned retirement community — and directed by Leigh Silverman to hold Wohl’s sweetness and spikiness in perfect balance, “Grand Horizons” keeps springing surprises right up to its very final moment. For sheer entertainment, I can’t think of another play this purely satisfying on Broadway this season.
Grand Horizons
Helen Hayes Theater
240 W 44th St, New York.
Tickets: $59 - $199; available online at www.2st.com. Through March 1.
Christopher Kelly may be reached at ckelly@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chriskelly74. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.