Brooklyn Laundry – 04 April 2024

There are a few playwrights as brilliant at writing subtext as John Patrick Shanley. When I think about the chilling, continued relevance of his most widely known masterpiece, Doubt, (read the Pages on Stages review here), I find the whole life of Shanley’s play to be in the choices of the actor and directors that convey the meaning he is writing about in a definitive way. It almost feels as though Shanley writes two scripts for each of his plays – one of lines that are spoken, and one of what’s really happening here.

While his latest work, Brooklyn Laundry is no exception regarding subtext, it is a definitive departure from the overly dark, serious nature of much of his work. The balance of dark and light tips in the favor of levity, wit, and quirky humanity, while somehow also painting a picture of sadness, isolation, loneliness, and lack of trust/faith in people we know on the surface but aren’t sure we want to know completely. In some ways, Brooklyn Laundry is not so different from Doubt – we see people with a vague desire to be good lose some of their innocence in a story of mistrust that causes them to hurt each other and not know why. We see the sister (ironically, also what the nuns of Doubt are called), who is bubbling with life, alone in her energy in a world of people with more serious matters on their minds. We see a familiar duality in Fran (Cecily Strong), who is trying to figure out a way to possibly be happy in the daunting, lengthy life ahead of her, while her sisters are struggling with knowing they are terminally ill, and attempting to communicate their truths in ways that are honest and real. They stumble in what they want to say, and their real depth of character lies in the clumsiness of working out the mechanics of a future that won’t include them. Between the sisters is love, but also envy and pain and agony. Fran doesn’t want to live the way she’s living but she has to go on living, and her sisters want to live any way they can because they can’t.

So it does sound pretty dark. Except that Shanley did not come right out and say that. Instead, he paints us a Hallmark movie. Girl meets Boy. Boy is welcome escape from lonely life. Girl and Boy share a moment then a date then a bed. Girl fights for Boy but in the face of surrounding pressure, loses him. The relationship dies. They meet again. They take each other back. They’re going to be a family. Happily ever after.

I don’t believe for a second that John Patrick Shanley really wrote us a Hallmark movie. He wrote us another master class in subtext, asking unanswerable questions. What does it mean to lose someone you love? Can you recover them, or does the mistrust in each other become its own form of self doubt? Is that what brings people together in the first place? Doubt?

Who is your family, and what happens when you don’t get to determine for yourself (or by yourself!) who is going to be in your lifelong term? How do you adjust to the role you are cast in when it’s not the role you auditioned for? 

In this case, John Patrick Shanley wrapped a lot of very serious questions in a deceptively light package. A comedy – maybe even a romcom. Something light. Yet even in levity, things remain unsaid. And even a laugh can echo strangely when the world around it is shifting like much of the set of Brooklyn Laundry. I remain deeply in awe of Shanley‘s side-by-side stories: the said the unsaid, the desire to speak and the desire to hide, and the crushing loneliness no matter what you decide to say or not say.

My metatheatrical take away is that in this case it’s the playwright who dictates the course of your journey- especially in this play, where he was also the director. Shanley speculates that there’s a stronger force bringing people together and apart in this world beyond the mundane characters doing their laundry. Shanley grapples with a higher power in the full body of his work – his own doubt and uncertainty. As a playwright, Shanley puzzles through life, exploring the same universal themes in settings as diverse as the rigid coldness of Catholic school and a Hallmark love story. In this way, it is not just his writing, but also his insight, that is truly brilliant.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.