‘My Son the Playwright’ review: Justin Tanner dives into family trauma

Playwright Justin Tanner, author of “Pot Mom,” “Little Theatre” and “Voice Lessons,” is one of the signal voices of L.A.’s wild and free intimate theater scene. He has not only written what might be his most personal play (there’s plenty of competition for that spot), but he’s also performing the work — solo.

“My Son the Playwright,” now receiving its world premiere in a Rogue Machine production at the Matrix Theatre’s cozy Henry Murray Stage, is divided into two acts. The first presents the father’s side of the tumultuous relationship; the second offers the son’s point of view. (An intermission, in which the son’s apartment is created out of the father’s, separates the two.)

Tanner plunges into these ostentatiously autobiographical roles, heedlessly, hectically and without a psychiatric net. He not only imagines competing sides of a traumatic family story but also inhabits the aggrieved minds of both Douglas, the out-of-touch father, and James, his out-of-control playwright son. He knows these characters well — perhaps too well for the sake of the play.

The play, directed by Lisa James, one of Tanner’s trusted collaborators, is remarkably fair to both characters without at all mitigating their flamboyant shortcomings. No one is condemned. No one is exculpated. The French proverb “to understand all is to forgive all” might be overstating matters. But “My Son the Playwright” demonstrates the value of a writing practice that finds empathy for even the most impossible of characters.

It takes courage to write such a play and maybe a touch of madness to perform it in such an intimate space. There’s no place for Tanner to hide upstairs at the attic-like Henry Murray Stage. Digging into tough subjects such as addiction and domestic abuse, he taps into excruciating feelings that aren’t easy to corral once they’re released. Rage, anguish, grief, inflamed by denial, cry out for anesthetic relief — gin for dad and pot and sex for his boy.

Distinguished by different hairdos and contrasting body language, Douglas, who can will himself to appear sedate, and James, who’s in a continual manic spiral, have more in common than either would care to admit. Griping to themselves in their apartments at different ends of California, they both seethe with resentment for having been unfairly treated by the other.

Douglas, who serves as James’ business manager, complains that he’s been picking up the pieces of his son’s irresponsible life for too long. He’s saddled with a large bag of receipts that is his job to sort through — a perfect symbol of the domestic wreckage that’s still in need of a thorough accounting.

James both longs for a family reckoning and does everything in his power to avoid one. He’s expected to make the five-hour drive to see his father, but first he has to get in touch with his dealer to replenish a bag of weed that has mysteriously disappeared. An unexpected phone call from an old hook-up threatens to derail his plans. James, not unlike his alcoholic father, is at the mercy of his compulsions.

Douglas doesn’t understand why his children are partial to their mother, his ex-wife, who was the source of so much instability and terror. But his own toxic contribution to the household chaos — stemming in part from his inability to accept his attraction to other men — has made it hard for him to see his role in James’ psychological problems.

The Bible got it wrong. It’s not the sins of the father that will be visited upon the son. It’s the unprocessed trauma that gets passed down from generation to generation. But that’s not all that comes through. Resilience, too, is transmitted, as is a desire to preserve the love that wasn’t destroyed in the family conflagration.

Musically inclined, Douglas and James both spend time at the keyboard, accompanying themselves on songs that give form to their amorphous inner lives. Art and culture are a refuge and a point of connection.

Movie posters decorate James’ disordered apartment. His appreciation of cinema harks back to one of the rare good memories of his father, who once took him to the movies to cheer him up after an episode of perverse cruelty from his mother.

Douglas belittles his son’s erratic career. He also holds a grudge that his own creative interests were never given an opportunity to develop. But it doesn’t take much to detect the pride he has in his son, whose work may not reliably pay the bills but has brought public recognition and a sense of redeeming purpose.

The staging brings us inside both homes, which set and lighting designer Mark Mendelson and prop designer Megan Trapani-Diven forensically bring to life. Neat or squalid, these apartments reflect the compromised lives these men have made for themselves. But the intermission that the set change demands seems like an intrusion in a play that could do without the realistic detail.

Tanner, of course, needs to catch his breath and change his hairstyle. But the material of “My Son the Playwright” is so raw that I wonder if he might have been able to see Douglas and James more clearly as dramatic characters if he weren’t also acting their roles. Art requires distance, and Tanner is so genuinely in the grip of intense family emotion that this father and son sometimes seem more real than theatrically compelling.

Neither lack for words, as they run through their grievance-filled monologues with a feverish mix of guilt and fury. Tanner’s language vividly captures the warped patterns of their thinking. But “My Son the Playwright” perhaps needs a little more tranquility for these recollections to make a more thorough transformation into art.