Perfect Arrangement

"Perfection is the only word that can describe Primary Stages’ 'Perfect Arrangement.' Somehow, a show set in the 1950s is fun, contemporary and completely relevant to today. Topher Payne’s script engages, makes you laugh, and also cry, as you follow the lives of Bob and Norma and their seemingly perfect marriages...The entire cast does a wonderful job of pulling you in. You leave, forever changed, viewing the world today just a bit differently than you did before." Full Review

"Topher Payne’s incredibly smart, funny, and remarkably topical comedy is now being presented under Michael Barakiva’s excellent direction...Payne not only writes clever yet realistic dialogue, but it’s a real joy to watch how his four main characters add depth and dimension as the evening progresses...The end result is at once surprising and inevitable. Isn’t that just perfect?" Full Review

"'Perfect Arrangement' is, well, a nearly perfect arrangement. Check your ordered brain cells at the door and buckle your seat belts...This is an extraordinary play that pulls you into an argument you might just as soon avoid...In 'Perfect Arrangement' we meet some of the people on whose shoulders we ride. This is a play that makes you want to go back and thank them. And once that is over, pull up a pitcher of martinis and have a serious sartorial discussion." Full Review

"This is a beautifully crafted piece. It feels authentic and hits home without resorting to histrionics or novelty...To Director Michael Barakiva’s credit, his couples seem genuinely natural, both romantically and in physical clinches. Every actor has illuminating personal attributes. The stage and props are imaginatively used. Timing is adroit, mining the piece as skillfully for comedy as drama." Full Review

"The sitcom tone smoothly transitions into something more serious and rebellious. 'Perfect Arrangement' is beautifully structured like an episode of I LOVE LUCY that never would have aired. Under Michael Barakiva's snappy direction, the nutty twists and turns are played with crisp comic panasche instead of as a parody, by a terrific ensemble." Full Review

"'Perfect Arrangement' is a witty and engrossing well-made play in its depiction of a life style that now seems foreign in an age of same-sex marriages and openly gay heroes and icons. However, the ending in which the author presupposes a gay civil rights movement, circa 1950, does not ring historically true. Nevertheless, up until the ending, 'Perfect Arrangement' is taut, humorous and absorbing in its use of the most popular dramatic form of the 1950’s, the well-made play." Full Review

"Playwright Topher Payne and director Michael Barakiva know exactly what they're doing. The domestic comedy hijinks at the start of their production make all the more poignant their eventual ruminations on all the obstacles—including shame and self loathing—that had to be overcome before gay people could stand up for their rights and openly tell their stories...Payne's well-constructed play sheds valuable light on that era. " Full Review

"Usually a playwright has to choose between writing a laugh-out-loud comedy and a very serious drama. Topher Payne has written both with 'Perfect Arrangement.' With a stellar cast and zippy direction, this 1950s sitcom-style comedy set during the Lavender Scare (in which sexual 'deviants' were targeted for dismissal from federal employment) manages to keep us in hysterics even as the circumstances become no laughing matter." Full Review

"Topher Payne’s moving comedy, 'Perfect Arrangement,' will appeal to a broad audience with its sharp dialogue and beautiful visuals, and that’s important, because this plucky piece of theater is a Trojan horse delivering a complicated conversation about gender equality, LGBTQ rights and personal shame...The play feels meticulously well-crafted under the direction of theater director, Michael Barakiva, with quick changes and rapid entrances galore." Full Review

"An attractive and engaging curiosity...How long they will remain complicit in order to maintain their secret lives is the moral dilemma that gives the 'Perfect Arrangement' unexpected power. It’s lovely to look at — and treacherous as hell." Full Review

"This is a well-written sitcom with a lot of laughs about a very serious topic, under the fast paced direction of Michael Barakiva with a first-rate cast." Full Review

"Mr. Payne is a deft and witty writer...Under Michael Barakiva’s direction, the cast is uniformly appealing and mostly able to negotiate the tonal sashays that the script demands...But so much of the play is so quick and so quippy and so very near farce that more serious discussions of rights and responsibilities don’t land." Full Review

"Zestfully directed by Michael Barakiva, the play zips along merrily up until the moment when the quartet faces exposure. At this juncture, Payne’s script loses some of its bubbliness and veers toward the pedantic as Payne attempts to make grand statements about gay self-loathing and complicity in persecution. Despite this shift in tone, the production overall proves difficult to resist." Full Review

"This is an imperfect 'Perfect Arrangement' -- sometimes sharply witty, sometimes almost leaden in its moralizing, and sometimes too silly for words. It doesn't help that the play climaxes with a come-to-Jesus finale in which too many characters successively realize that honesty is the best policy." Full Review

"The setup is an excellent one...Unfortunately the writing and direction diffuse much of the impact by hitting too hard, placing a distracting emphasis on broad, sometimes farcical comedy that's not funny enough to sustain itself and begins to feel strained...It generates a few good laughs, but, for the most part, cheats the characters of reality, making them seem like abstractions.." Full Review

"Contrivances build up, and the ending veers into righteousness. What looked like a 1950s sitcom turns out to be a 1980s sitcom in disguise, capped with liberal messages to applaud. But 'Perfect Arrangement' moves quick and looks nifty. Better yet, it features a pair of really capital performances. Even when the play seems overarranged, they are damn near perfect." Full Review

"There's much that's entertaining and thought-provoking about 'Perfect Arrangement,' but it would be better if Payne didn't himself discard Kitty's lesson so readily. He may have happened on a compelling way to immerse us within the mores of a different time. But by working too hard to connect that era to ours, he forgot that all revolutionaries, like all housewives, are not easily categorized." Full Review

"At its best, Payne’s play tells the story of the government’s persecution of gay people in the 1950s by borrowing giddily from a 1950’s sitcom like 'I Love Lucy...' But the play ultimately stumbles...There is a shift in tone, from comic to gravely serious. That would not be a problem if the resolution of the play were not so self-satisfied and implausible." Full Review

"Payne hasn't quite managed to make the funny and serious elements coexist comfortably. As the play progresses there's an increasing sense that he's still deciding what kind of play he wants to write...When 'Perfect Arrangement' strays into more and more into serious territory it becomes rather unbalanced. In fact, it ends up on the preachy side." Full Review

"On the surface, 'Perfect Arrangement' appears to be a hard-hitting look back at a period in America when fear of the other manifested itself hideously. Certainly, if 'Perfect Arrangement' had materialized then, it would have been. The thing is, however, that it wasn't written 65 years ago...In the play's belatedly timely circumstances, Barakiva's cast members acquit themselves well, although he might not have encouraged them to behave so much like cartoon characters during the opening scene." Full Review