Tag Archives: The_spoils

By David Gordon – Off-Broadway

They say the third time is the charm. In the case of Oscar-nominated actor and dramatist Jesse Eisenberg, that idiom couldn’t be truer. Eisenberg has finally hit his stride as a writer in The Spoils, a play not only more complete than his previous works, but also one that is significantly better than the last two combined.

Those were Asuncion (2011) and The Revisionist (2013). The former is a comedy that isn’t particularly funny; the latter worked only because Vanessa Redgrave was its star. Here, in a New Group production at the Pershing Square Signature Center directed by Scott Elliott, Eisenberg proves himself an astute chronicler of millennial misery, satisfying a dramatic craving we didn’t realize we were having until the lights went down.

Set in one of those sleek New York City apartments that exist only onstage (Derek McLane is the master scenic designer), The Spoils explores the internal jealousies that rear their ugly heads when everyone else seems to get what they want. The protagonist is Ben (Eisenberg), one of those holier-than-thou rich kids from the suburbs who thinks he’s better than the rest of bougie society because he hasn’t sold out, even though he’s been booted from film school and lives off his parents’ money.

Chief among the targets of Ben’s wretchedness are Kalyan (Kunal Nayyar), his Nepalese, business school roommate, and Kalyan’s MD-in-training girlfriend, Reshma (Annapurna Sriram). When Ben finds out that Sarah (Erin Darke), his elementary school crush, is marrying Ted (Michael Zegen), their former classmate who’s now a banker, he decides, naturally, to destroy their relationship.

Ben is an all too recognizable figure these days, the person who does bad things to pump up his own self-esteem, only to be mortally wounded when people call him a jerk. And yet, in true-to-life fashion, everyone keeps giving him second and third chances, even when he’s alienated them in heinous ways. Eisenberg has spent years perfecting this lost soul, both onstage and in films like The Social Network, and his volatile, live-wire performance in The Spoils shows a level of mature understanding that comes only with time.

Elliott, whose past productions have either been massive hits (like the all-starHurlyburly revival of 2005) or major misfires (the Amanda Peet-led Barefoot in the Park), brings his A-game here, guiding the actors to meticulously real performances. When Reshma, nicely played with Valley Girl brightness by Sriram, gets fed up listening to Ben’s tirades, she heads out onto the apartment’s balcony and, of course, takes a selfie. Darke’s performance is similarly genuine, and almost painfully authentic, especially in the play’s single most awkward scene, which she shares in the second half with Eisenberg.

Nayyar, perhaps best known for his work as Raj on TV’s The Big Bang Theory, makes an impressively sensitive New York stage debut as Kalyan, whose earnest struggle is to make a better life for himself in a country where that is actually attainable. Zegen is highly amusing as Ted, a moneyman who’s not particularly interesting but wears a suit well (Susan Hilferty’s costumes look like they’d appear on the denizens of a midtown Manhattan bar).

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Jesse Eisenberg & Kunal Nayyar in The New Group’s ‘The Spoils’ Image: Monique Carboni

by Frank Schneck

Jesse Eisenberg stars in his new play about a would-be filmmaker scheming to destroy the relationship between his grade-school crush and her new fiance.

by Jesse Green

Jesse Eisenberg & Kunal Nayyar in The New Group’s ‘The Spoils’ Image: Monique Carboni

His first line is “Namaste, motherfuckers,” and the fact that he says it as a kind of greeting to his Nepalese roommate and the roommate’s Indian-American girlfriend does not make him seem any less insensitive. In fact, insensitivity is the only brilliance of Ben, at least as played by the terrifying Jesse Eisenberg in his new play, The Spoils: He has raised smartass hipster-speak to the level of a diagnosable disease. Call it ulcerative sarcasm. Ben can hardly utter a word that isn’t insincere or hostile or, on the other hand, narcissistic and maudlin — and he utters about a million words a minute whenever he’s not stoned. Eventually, the nastiness turns in on itself, but until then he’s just another entitled twentysomething filmmaker manqué living off his rich father and thinking that makes him a misunderstood genius. 

He’s not; his filmmaking cred is as phony as his friendship with Kalyan, the non-swearing, dream-interpreting, too-good-to-be-true roommate he eventually betrays. (Kalyan’s in business school at NYU.) But the play’s conceit depends on such deceptions and mismatches; it’s as if Eisenberg set out to see what would happen if you took a basically cheerful sitcom, like Friends, and dropped a raving sociopath into the middle of it. What happens isn’t very nice or, alas, very good. For one thing, in order to make the set-up work in a straight-on realist dramedy, a lot of logic must be quickly abandoned. You might accept that Ben lives in a glassy, high-floor two-bedroom New York apartment with a terrace and a Jasper Johns because his father bought it for him, and you might believe (just barely) that Kalyan would put up with his pretensions and passive-aggression (“I’m a dick so you look awesome by comparison”) because he’s poor and gets to live there rent-free. But why, as the plot takes shape, do none of the other characters immediately bolt from the creepy weirdo? First there’s Kalyan’s type-A, no-bullshit girlfriend, Reshma, who to her credit does hate Ben, but hangs around anyway. Then there’s Ted, an old friend whom Ben re-encounters on the street; misunderstanding Ben’s barrage of obvious insults as humor, he responds with bromantic admiration. (“You should totally do standup.”) Finally, there’s Ted’s fiancée, Sarah, who refuses to be alienated even when Ben expresses his inappropriate love for her by sharing the single most disgusting story I’ve ever heard from a stage.

I realize that line will be an enticement for some, and perhaps even get used in an ad. (The New Group, which has produced The Spoils, has a special fondness for excretory narratives.) But I’m actually worried for Eisenberg, who is a little too good at this sort of material; after all, he wrote it for himself. The skeevy giggles, the Tourettic yips, the chest taps as if to see if his heart is still there: No one does them better. But if he has shaped the first act to provide an opportunity for displaying this catalog of expressive behaviors, what is he trying to do in the second act, which reveals Ben’s supposedly profound fantasies to be merely sick, and delivers several dramatically necessary but overdone comeuppances? The result is like watching a YouTube loop of some hapless jerk jumping into a frozen pool, over and over. Eventually you begin to wonder if the play was expressly designed to produce this series of extreme mortifications. Nor are we spared the uncomfortable hint of authorial self-flagellation when we read in a program insert that the character of Kalyan is based on a Nepalese friend of Eisenberg’s named … Kalyan. Is this a play or some kind of autoerotic mea culpa?

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by Marilyn Stasio

Can’t wait to see Jesse Eisenberg play a stoner jerk trained in the superhuman skills of an assassin in the upcoming movie “American Ultra”? The rich jerk he plays in his self-scripted black comedy, “The Spoils,” doesn’t need superhuman skills to be super-toxic. Following a plot that’s almost a parody of a good-friends sitcom, this deeply unpleasant man-child manages to alienate his roommate and best friend, the girl he’s in love with, and anyone else who happens to walk through the door. The cast is terrific and director Scott Elliott (also the artistic director of The New Group) finds it in his heart to extend some compassion to Eisenberg’s perfect little beast.

The last time Eisenberg was on a New York stage — in “The Revisionist,” another play he wrote — he played an arrogant young American behaving with gross disrespect for a Holocaust survivor (played by Vanessa Redgrave). Ben, the insufferable character he plays here, is another one of those boyish brats you love to hate, and the writer-actor plays his unlovely creation with all the love-hate he deserves.

Ben is somewhere in his mid- to late-20s, and despite having dropped out of graduate school, he’s living comfortably in Manhattan in a modern apartment (tastefully designed by Derek McLane) subsidized by his rich but pointedly absent father. Although his life seems totally aimless, he manages to keep his self-loathing at bay with the fiction (improbably accepted by the few friends he has in the world) that he’s making a brilliant independent film.

For companionship rather than financial need, Ben has acquired a Nepalese roommate named Kalyan (Kunal Nayyar, a familiar face from “The Big Bang Theory” and thoroughly likable here) who is as sweet as Ben is sour, as emotionally generous as Ben is selfish. Kalyan has a lovely girlfriend, Reshma (Annapurna Sriram, perfect in this role), originally from India but far more Americanized than the rather naive Kalyan, and quite rightly protective of him.

Give the devil his due, Ben seems genuinely fond of Kalyan. (In a dopey but still-poignant gesture, he calls Kalyan his best friend and clumsily warns Reshma not to break his heart.) But the poor guy can’t help himself — he’s just obnoxious. And to give Eisenberg his due, that’s exactly the way he plays Ben.

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L-R Jesse Eisenberg, Erin Darke, Michael Zegen, Annapurna Sriram, and Kunal Nayyar in The New Group’s ‘The Spoils’ Image: Monique Carboni

THE SPOILS
Written by Jesse Eisenberg
Directed by Scott Elliot
Through June 28, 2015
The New Group
The Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd Street
), http://www.TheNewGroup.org

By David NouNou

To what ends would one go through to annihilate the ones closest to them? How low would privileged, shiftless millennials sink to, in order to douse the happiness of those hard workers, contributors to society, and people who are just happy to be themselves? How disliked and repellant do you have to be in order to get some recognition from those closest to you? These are just some of the demons that playwright Jesse Eisenberg tries to exorcise here, and he deals with them in a Machiavellian way, with hysterical humor and of course the drama at the core.

Ben (Jesse Eisenberg) is over privileged, living in a fantastic high-rise apartment that his father bought him, and was kicked out of NYU graduate film school. Ben’s never done a day’s work in his life. He’s a pot-smoking, aimless guy who berates everyone close to him. In addition, he’s a bigot, and can’t stand anyone’s happiness, ethics or ambitions. On good days, Ben is sarcastic and spews venom. Ben has a Nepalese roommate, Kalyan (Kunal Nayyar), a hard worker and a finance major. Kalyan loves being in America, and genuinely cares for and likes Ben. He feels obligated to him because Ben lets him live there for free.

Kalyan has a girlfriend, Reshma (Annapurna Sriram), who is medical student on clinical rotations and is very fond of Kalyan, admires his ambitions but has her misgivings about him. She feels free to come and go in Ben’s apartment, and she has contempt for Ben.

On this auspicious day, Ben runs into a former grade-school acquaintance, Ted (Michael Zegan), a likeable Wall Street douche. Ted is marrying Sarah (Erin Drake), a former grade school crush of Ben’s who is now a public school teacher. Now the circle of characters is complete and Eisenberg’s Machiavellian mind shifts the action into high gear. How does a self-hating, childish bully vanquish anyone who is happy, to some degree self-absorbed, has a modicum of success and looks forward to a brighter future?

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