David Brown
Theatre Appreciation
Monmouth University
Professor Moran
11/28/12
Review of: The Last of the Haussman’s
Stephen Beresford’s play The Last of the Haussman’s is a wildly entertaining and outrageous comedy about a dysfunctional family and their house. Stephen quickly immerses the audience into the plays colorful language within the first few minutes. The play is set in the 1960’s and has plenty of reference to drugs, homosexuality and sex. From Libby who is portrayed as a worn out baby boomer and her brother Nick who is shown as a gay alcoholic. The main theme of the play to this writer is confrontment and forgiveness. Meaning each character will confront their true issue to the other characters and by the end character will have come to a sense of realization and forgive the other and move on with their life.
The play only has six characters and of those six, four of them are related. Libby and Nick are brother and sister who are somewhat estranged from their mother Judy. Summer is Libby’s daughter who is very angry towards her mother. Judy is a former hippie who left her kids behind to do drugs and protest. Peter is a doctor and is cheating on his wife with Libby. Finally there is Daniel, who is a teenage boy that uses the family’s swimming pool and is somewhat of a loner.
Stephen does an excellent job with each characters individual appearance and demeanor. Libby is portrayed as a smoker who is very worn out from a hard life. She’s wearing high black heels with dirty, worn out jeans and a grey vest. Nick is a very emotionally unstable character which comes out through his actions and words. He is in poor physical condition, dirty, unshaven and wearing mix matched ragged clothes. Then there is Summer, a fifteen year old bisexual girl, who is extremely outspoken, especially against her mother. She has numerous sudden outbursts of anger and hostility. A few times she made reference that her mother is a whore but all of this was done through...