Now in its twenty-first year of operation, The Tank is a dynamic theatrical force at the southern edge of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. The complex of two intimate theatres serves up a steady stream of fresh work from many disciplines, including theatre, dance, film, and puppetry, all under the curatorial eye of Artistic Director Meghan Finn. Without a doubt, The Tank is a welcome presence on the city’s cultural scene, and is absolutely deserving of both moral and financial support.
I recently attended a near-capacity matinee of VATICAN FALLS, a play by Frank J. Avella and, before curtain rise, was immediately struck by the taste and simplicity of the production values. A suggestive unit set by Tony DiBernardo, atmospheric sound by Zek Stewart, and on-target lighting by David Shocket, were each a tribute to savvy theatre craft and excellent use of available resources and budget.
It was affirming to witness the performances of actors with whose work I was unfamiliar but whom I would gladly see again. Jeremiah Clapp, Tucker Aust, Alice Barrett-Mitchell, and newcomer James Gracia, all made very strong impressions, both singly and in ensemble.
Valentino Garavani is quoted as saying: “Elegance is the balance between proportion, emotion, and surprise.” These four are elegant actors, whose attention to detail and unforced, fully engaged, poise eschewed empty theatrics and endowed their characterizations with a sympathetic, identifiable, and credible human dimension.
The performance began with a brief but striking visual sequence that set a high expectation for what was to follow. That expectation remained unfulfilled. Within minutes, both script and staging toppled from their initial elevation into a pit of stale theatrical devices which offered a tepid series of conventional, prosaic, and ineffective solutions to problems that were largely self-created.
Descriptive copy about the play touts it as fast-paced. It is anything but. Having the actors steamroll and speed through scenes to the point of unintelligibility simply does not qualify as pace. The directors (there were two) failed to cobble together a coherent production of this seriously flawed script. Tempo and rhythm were monotonous. The abstract and flexible set design was underutilized and approached without imagination. What might have been dramatic high points in the stories were overwritten and maudlin, and treated directorially with a very odd combination of the superficial and the exaggerated. Predictable and formulaic, direct to you from a “Directing 101” playbook. Reasonably
efficient traffic management is but a small part of directing a production, and even in that most basic regard there were serious, sometimes unintentionally comical, errors.
Individual acting methods clashed irreconcilably, ranging from self-conscious, vacuous, egocentric posturing and telegraphing to an imaginary Broadway theatre balcony, then on to Dynasty-type American soap operatic melodrama, arriving periodically at Chekhovian realism, while gingerly touching everything in between.

For directors in New York City, with hundreds of fine actors willing to work for little or no pay, there is absolutely no excuse for this sort of mishmosh casting. It signals incompetence, laziness, indifference, or worse - self-important overconfidence - all of which are nothing but counterfeit theatrical currency.
The play is self-described as non-linear, an easy evasion of responsibility couched in academic art jargon for something that is actually untethered, undisciplined, uncontrolled, and dishonest. There is another important factor of irresponsibility here. If indeed this is a play structured unconventionally, why was there no director’s and/or playwright’s note in the program booklet? Why was there no scene breakdown? There was plenty of room in the booklet. These are serious omissions. Audience members were needlessly bewildered.
The Italian accents were relentlessly juvenile in their execution, another deficiency of directorial control.
According to the program, one of the actors prides themselves on being bilingual, but yet was often at sea, rarely centered, sometimes awkwardly careening recklessly from Bronx Urban Street Latina to Topo Gigio grade school Italian in the course of one speech. Completely unrelated to conversational competence, even in a native speaker, there must be put into play a theatrical craft which ensures that an accent is consistent, intelligible, and audible. That craft was M.I.A..

The significance of the play’s theme was undermined by the imposition of a Buck Rogers/Killer Kane- style action story involving jagged and clumsy hairpin turns in character development to justify mass murders and other un-ironically ludicrous vengeful mayhem. A tedious, mechanical, and implausible romantic subplot was poorly written and more poorly executed. The piece literally falls apart in its final scenes, and the closing line might just hold the title for worst ever.
According to the program, this play was a semi-finalist at The Eugene O’Neill Center in 2021. It must have been a lean year at the O’Neill.
NOTATE BENE, PRODUCERS: Promotional materials describe this ungainly student work as something which it most decidedly is not. Hyperbole is one thing, misrepresentation quite another.
The permanent damage caused by sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church at the hands of clergy is an eminently worthy subject for stage, screen, journalistic article, and book. The tragedies cannot be overstated, and the stories demand to be told.
In this writer’s opinion, a theatrical treatment has yet to be written with the emotional profundity, psychological subtlety, and metaphysical reverence which the subject so richly deserves.
THE TANK
312 West 36th Street
NY, NY 1018
212-563-6269
https://thetanknyc.org