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Review: ‘Invincible’ Brings Class and Conflict to the Party

Alastair Whatley and Emily Bowker in “Invincible,” at 59E59 Theaters.Credit...Manuel Harlan
Invincible

At the start of Torben Betts’s “Invincible,” part of the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, Emily and Oliver, incomers to a northern English town, are expecting the couple next door for drinks and snacks. The party isn’t nice. The gesture isn’t really neighborly.

A caustic comedy about country and class, the play intends to skewer working-class narrow-mindedness and liberal condescension. But it’s unlikely to burst or expand the socioeconomic bubble of anyone watching. Had it been staged a few years ago, it might have felt timely. Now its arguments are obvious at best.

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From left, Ms. Bowker, Graeme Brookes, Elizabeth Boag and Mr. Whatley in this play set in northern England.Credit...Manuel Harlan

Oliver (Alastair Whatley) and Emily (Emily Bowker) have moved from London, victims of the economic downturn. Having been laid off from a government job, Oliver is now doing some freelance editing, while Emily, who doesn’t believe in marriage or property or alcohol or fun, is busy setting up an artists’ co-op and founding an Amnesty International chapter.

Their neighbors are Alan (Graeme Brookes), a postman who likes to chug beer, watch sports and paint pictures of his cat, and Dawn (Elizabeth Boag), a part-time dental receptionist who arrives in a dress so tight and strappy it makes most medieval torture devices seem comfy.

They fail to spark a lifelong friendship, which is no great surprise. Especially after Oliver admits that they moved to this street because they wanted to live among “real people” and Emily proclaims that soccer “rots the soul.”

The play is set in 2012 and was first staged in England pre-“Brexit” and pre-Trump. Still, the political differences between the couple are obvious. That Emily makes the monstrous decision to serve tea and salted cashews instead of booze lays the mismatch bare. When Alan brings over a couple of his canvases for Emily, a professional painter, to judge, a good time is had by none.

Then again, terrible parties and wrecked dinners and disastrous get-togethers can be the stuff of great theater. But here, despite a vein of Ayckbourn-esque melancholy and a nod toward state-of-the-nation seriousness, Mr. Betts and the director, Stephen Darcy, keep surging past naturalism toward strident farce, then stumbling into tragedy. The production always spells out what was already pretty intelligible and which recent elections have made glaringly evident.

Between-scene sequences point up Alan’s boorishness and Dawn’s sexiness. The script forces Emily to underline her awfulness. And then highlight it. And then attach a bunch of neon sticky notes just for extra emphasis. There’s also a frenzied rendition of “Please Mr. Postman” that should be returned to sender.

These gestures may be intended to establish stereotypes that the play will then dismantle, but they seem like exaggerations meant to elicit laughs. Besides, the stereotypes mostly go unchallenged. Alan is boorish. Dawn is sexy. Emily is awful, though she has a tragic excuse for being so horrid. Oliver, the character who ultimately holds the most money and power, emerges as the least ridiculous.

If anyone still entertains a fantasy that people with divergent backgrounds and beliefs can be brought together by their common humanity, “Invincible” insists otherwise. Maybe this is truthful. It’s also fairly corrosive. “We’re all English, aren’t we?” Emily asks. For Mr. Betts, that’s the insoluble problem.

Invincible
Through July 2 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 212-279-4200, 59e59.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Bringing Class and Conflict to the Party. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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