Off-Broadway's Primary Stages Theater opens its 30th season tonight with Poor Behavior, a comedy by Theresa Rebeck, creator of TV's "Smash" and filmdom's "Harriet the Spy" and author of plays including Dead Accounts and The Understudy.
Poor Behavior is a story about "two couples spending a not-so-idyllic weekend in the country" dealing with infidelity, long-ago mistakes, and, according to director Evan Cabnet (The Model Apartment, A Kid Like Jake), "the search for a moral compass, for some common ground on which to agree on how to behave."
All that makes it sound rather serious for a comedy, actually. In any case, a 2007 profile of the playwright in The New York Times was headlined "An Acute Interest in Bad Behavior." That was four years before Poor Behavior debuted in 2011 at the Center Theater Group's Mark Taper Forum, with Sharon Lawrence in the cast.
It seems Rebeck's main concerns as a playwright don't change much.
In her TheaterMania review of the world premiere production, Terri Roberts called Poor Behavior "frequently hilarious and occasionally insightful" and wrote that "Rebeck's words can be sharp as knives and just as easily cause serious wounds."
The new production stars Heidi Armbruster (Disgraced, "My Man is a Loser," "Michael Clayton"), Brian Avers (The Explorers Club, The Lieutenant of Inishmore), Jeff Biehl (Machinal, Master Builder) and Katie Kressler (Nikolai and the Others, The House of Blue Leaves). Scenic design is by Lauren Helpern, costume design by Jessica Pabst, lighting design by Jason Lyons and sound design by Jill BC Du Boff.
Among Rebeck's other works for the stage and screen are Seminar, Mauritius, The Scene, "Harriet the Spy" and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Omnium Gatherum (co-written with Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros). She is also recipient of an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a Peabody Award as a writer/producer for "NYPD Blue."
Previews for Poor Behavior begin tonight. The official opening is August 17 and the production is scheduled to run through September 7.
