Skip to main contentThese aren't the Joneses to keep up with. They don't have perfect bodies, jobs, marriages or kids, and they don't drive BMWs. These are The Realistic Joneses, and in Will Eno's affecting one-act play, two couples who both happen to be named Jones get to know one another in unexpectedly poignant ways.
John (Michael O'Connell) and Pony (Dana Green) move in next door to Bob (Darius Pierce) and Jennifer (Kerry Ryan) in the suburbs of a quiet mountain town. The couples are poised at that murky estuary where late middle age begins to bleed into senior-citizen territory. Bob has a degenerative disease, John's having trouble remembering things, and their marriages are suffering. As the couples socialize, Bob and Pony become attracted to one another, as do John and Jennifer.
Mercifully, this doesn't degenerate into some tawdry tableau of geriatric swinging. The mutual attractions aren't so much based on bumping and grinding (although some of that occurs) as they are on the happy attention that comes from being seen by a new set of eyes.
Despite the specters of decline and death that haunt Eno's script, his mordant dialogue earns well-deserved laughs. "I'm always attracted to only half a person," Pony tells Bob in a stinging, backhanded compliment, "which is probably why I'm attracted to you." In a moment of emotional epiphany, Jennifer confesses to Bob, "You hurt my feelings every day." Without missing a beat, he replies: "That's what feelings are for."
It would be easy for four people lined up on lawn chairs in a suburban backyard to come across as well-worn middle-class archetypes, but that never happens. The quartet of actors navigate this bittersweet prose effortlessly, seeming natural as they inhabit the characters' idiosyncrasies. Eno and the actors show deep compassion for these couples, and it's contagious.
As the action winds down after a bevy of revelations, jealousies and health crises—the foursome sits together beneath a star-speckled sky. "Things probably aren't going to turn out so well for us, are they?" Jennifer asks no one in particular.
We know the answer—for them and for all of us. But the crystalline night still seems like a little miracle, and so do the pleasures of wine, good company and the tiny, jewel-box moments that we snatch from the jaws of doom.
see it: The Realistic Joneses is at Third Rail Repertory Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 235-1101. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Saturday and 2 pm Sunday. Through Nov. 14. $42.50.
Willamette Week