Phillip Seymour Hoffman is co-artistic director of a theatre group called LABrynth, and they are in residence at The Public Theater in New York. The group works on 5 plays per year, and Hoffman stars in one of the five.

"Jack Goes Boating" was the play he chose this year. What a disappointment. The play was dull, pedantic, revealed nothing and went nowhere. I've never seen Hoffman turn in a poor performance....until last night. Oh my. He played a rather simple-minded guy who's never had a relationship, who loves one single reggae song and plays it endlessly on his Walkman (yes, a tape), and is trying to tame his limp blond locks into Rasta-type curls. But he's not a Rasta, he tells his friend, though they smoke pot at every opportunity.

There were 4 players, two men and two women, all members of LABrynth. The women were particularly weak, and the other man gave a relatively good performance. They were a couple in a relationship and Hoffman (Jack) who is attempting to begin a relationship with the other, quite odd, woman.

It was the set design and lighting that were the stars. We visited the couple's living room, a hospital room, a subway platform, the women's workplace, the front seat of a limo, the odd woman's bedroom, a lake with a rowboat (Jack does go boating), and most inventively, a pool where Jack learns how to swim. It's great fun to see how all those disparate places can be created simply with lights, fabric and some wood. Really cool.

Hoffman's character is simple, but it's possible to play a simple man with depth and breadth. That didn't happen last night. I was perplexed by his line readings, which sounded like just that. He read his lines in the same singsong fashion, always as if asking a question.

At the intermission, I heard comments from the audience about the banality of the play.

You see, the play IS the thing. Theater (and movies, too) begin with the written word. If the vehicle is weak, there is only so far the director and cast can go. This play was uninteresting and dealt with characters about whom I didn't give a fig. Feh!

I don't think the director did well by his actors, and I wonder if the actors weren't angry with each other last night, at least two of them.

All in all, a disappointing evening, though I was sitting so close that I got to see up Hoffman's nose. Now that's CLOSE! :eek: