Review: Putting a ‘Party Face’ on a Suicide Recovery

NEW YORK — A handy tip: If you are a character in a play and you are invited to a get-together, don’t go. Don’t go to dinner parties. Don’t go to cocktail parties, reunions, anniversaries or showers. A costume party? Absolutely not. And if a Dublin woman recovering from a suicide attempt throws an inexplicable shindig to celebrate the completion of her new kitchen extension, RSVP no.

That absurd soiree activates Isobel Mahon’s “Party Face,” an unlikely comedy at City Center Stage II that recently toured Ireland under its original title, “Boom?” Before the evening is out, drinks will have been drunk, insults lobbed, upchuck hurled and a topiary sculpture annihilated. Thanks for coming. Don’t let the canapés hit you on the way out.

Why has an audience been asked over? Well, that probably has something to do with the eternal sweetheart Hayley Mills (“Pollyanna,” “The Parent Trap”), who has been given a plum role and makes a dainty meal of it, all while wearing high heels and pink silk capri pants. No small feat.

In Amanda Bearse’s production, our hostess is the glum Mollie Mae (Gina Costigan), home from the psychiatric unit after suffering a nervous breakdown in the cereal aisle of a supermarket. (Been there.) Joining her are her sister, Maeve (Brenda Meaney); her neighbor Chloe (Allison Jean White); her psych ward compatriot Bernie (Klea Blackhurst); and her mother, Carmel (Mills), a status-conscious suburbanite with a genius for undermining.

“Oh, lovely flowers,” Carmel tells her daughter as she enters. “Course in my day you never saw a lily outside of a funeral parlor, but sure, that’s progress.” If Mills doesn’t quite nail the Dublin accent, boy, does she ace the sunny jibe.

Predictably, the party doesn’t go well. What party in a comedy-drama does? But what’s strange about the play, which is written in a realistic style, is how implausible it all seems, from drinks to snack to chat. Each character is made to move and speak in ways that contradict even a passing knowledge of human behavior and reap only sporadic laughs. Fete accompli.

There are glimmers of a state-of-the-nation play here, in which shiny surfaces mask the dissatisfaction underneath. Mostly it’s a welter of women behaving badly and doubtfully. What does it say that Bernie, a manically depressed obsessive-compulsive moved to swathe everything in plastic wrap, seems like the most grounded and believable person onstage?

But the actresses appear to be enjoying themselves, swigging prop sauvignon blanc, trading taunts and at one point forming a conga line. At least someone is having a good time.

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Additional Information:

‘Party Face’

Through April 8 at City Center, Manhattan; 212-581-1212, nycitycenter.org. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.