Dear non-Black playwrights with a panache for family dramas, don’t write, think or “create” Black characters without an intentional etching and investment in their arc.
I Need That, written by Theresa Rebeck and directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, is a play about a man’s compulsive hoarding following the death of his wife. But the three-hander trudges along like a poorly written sitcom, grasping at themes versus addressing its lack of emotional heart or subtlety.
Sam, a depressed recluse played by Danny DeVito, lives in squalor. Sam’s only guests are his friend Foster (a charming Ray Anthony Thomas) and his daughter Amelia (Lucy DeVito). They both move with shock, concern and mounting frustration at Sam’s accumulation of stuff as well as his complete denial that he has a problem.
The play’s conflict hinges on an imminent condemnation and forfeiture of Sam’s apartment if he doesn’t (literally) clean up his act. But set design by Alexander Dodge doesn’t quite go far enough. It gives more disorganized antique shop than hoarder hell – an organized chaos with books and stacked suitcases versus the devastating mess of an actual hoarder’s hub.
I Need That is clearly a vehicle for DeVito’s return to Broadway, coming six years after his debut in Arthur Miller’s The Price. DeVito is funny and makes the most of Rebeck’s slapstick material. Within the ensemble and alone, he brings charm and occasional devastation to Sam’s afflictions. A scene where he plays a solo game of Sorry! is arresting and hilarious, an exhibition of his considerable talents.
But Rebeck’s material doesn’t quite have the humor or devastation needed for a story about a man’s inner demons. In a play of bits, some jokes do land, amplified by the grouchiness of DeVito’s delivery. “Don’t just eat that without a plate, you slob,” DeVito chides Foster, all while standing in his own curated filth.
But the reasons behind Sam’s hoarding is thwacked into I Need That versus an investigation into his inner self. Revelations are so linear, so manicured. They deny a more complicated reality that those with mental illness actually live in.
A dramedy that’s sparse on drama and comedy could be forgiven. But there’s something particularly grating about Rebeck’s treatment of Foster, who is Black. Foster is given a shell of an outer life, a thin plot about a son who was affected by military service and a precarious housing situation.
Outside of that, Foster only serves as a therapist to Sam and Amelia. Amelia, especially, seems to only recognize Foster as a servant-proxy. She strangely accuses Foster of fully enabling Sam’s habits, as if Foster is responsible for the actions of a fully grown man. When Foster contemplates a move away from the neighborhood, Amelia angrily confronts her father about Foster’s soon-to-be disappearance: “What’s supposed to happen to you when he’s not here?”
Foster’s etch isn’t the only wayward use of Black people in Rebeck’s world. While going through his belongings, Sam discovers a guitar he inherited from Sonny, a Black janitor who served in the military. The janitor later kills himself. When Sam calls his family to let them know, Sam discovers that he had been calling the janitor by the wrong name during his entire tenure.
The anecdote, the play’s most explicit mention of race, lives awkwardly. The cringe is only furthered by Foster’s intense anger, met by a clueless Sam (“Is this a racial thing?” Sam asks). There seems to be no intention behind the conjuring of Black death, an incident that is rarely mentioned again. Sonny’s offstage death is wedged in to materialize a new dynamic, but it does nothing to actually address what lives in the play.
There’s so little about the mechanics of Sam and Foster’s friendship, what kindled the kind of relationship where Foster arrives at Sam’s overstuffed apartment, pastries in hand. There’s little shading, nuance or otherwise to Sam’s flavor of ailment, no curation about what makes Sam, Sam.
There is a version of the play where audiences are treated to that level of in-depth story. Unfortunately, I Need That chooses to exist as an awkward whiplash between the consequences of military service, grief, father-daughter relationships and (apparently) race relations.
“You don’t need to drown in stuff,” Amelia says to Sam.
You really don’t.
