The Blueprint Blues

This is done with a sensitivity and a sensibility that is almost superhuman. Relationships between people and situations and words, ordinarily vague and ambiguous in life and theater, are so clearly delineated here that Benefactors is as much a diagram as a play. There is meaning and atmospheric punch in the way David and Jane's big, homey house seems to eclipse the smaller, exposed-brick home of Colin and Sheila: It's like the big house is trying to squeeze the unhappy couple out of existence. The queer longing in Gheridian's voice as she raves about "the fresh, tidy smell of clean clothes" in David and Jane's drawers; the casual contempt in Durkin's when he says "You disgust me"; the ever-mounting anger in Adjan's eyes as she keeps silent about her husband's blithe hubris; the faraway and happy look in St. Pierre's as he insists that even Colin can be saved from his own bitterness if only people are a bit nicer to him — there is so much pitch-perfect drama in Dramaworks' show that you can't imagine anybody seeing deeper into Frayn's vision or so perfectly capturing its multiple subtleties. If the show is a diagram, it's a creepy and exhilarating one, filled with portent not just for the characters on stage, but for anyone driven by the same impulses that drive them. Since Benefactors deals in nearly universal impulses, that means everybody.