Ah, the family drama. What’s more fun than to learn about others, and what’s more disappointing than finding out that they’re just like you? I guess that’s the beauty of universal truths. Not handled well, though, these truths can drive you mad with boredom.

This is the case with The Night Season, by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, a play meandering for truth and completion. And what it does find is no different that what is found in hundreds of other stories. Some will welcome the familiarity. For others, knowing how it concludes before arriving at the end is an exercise in patience and concentration.

In the play, we witness a family drama set in Sligo, Ireland, which was once home for poet W.B. Yeats. Lenkiewicz–inspired by Yeats’ work–doesn’t handle language or image quite as well as her muse. However, like Yeats, she’s earnest with her ideas.

The family consists of three sisters (Judith, Rose, and Maud), a single father (Patrick), and a grandmother (Lily). The mother is never seen and living off in London, having left the family 15 years ago. This is the family’s underlying angst. Their need for love manifests itself in several ways. Rose sleeping with a visiting actor (playing Yeats…yes, Yeats, in a movie), Judith’s on again off again affair with Gary, and Maud’s care for her absent husband are the three most blatant examples. Patrick’s interest in a bartender with big breasts and Lily’s childlike adoration for the actor add levity to a play carrying a lot of woe-is-me weight.

Though filled with stock characters (e.g., the flighty grandmother, the drunken dad) and clichéd scenes (I won’t give away the ending), the writing’s structure is interesting enough to keep you reading. In fact, it feels like a screenplay, with quick, short scenes and various locations throughout its pages.

That’s actually what this play needs, to be made into a movie. If so, it will do well on Lifetime, where its tale of unrequited love would fit right in with that network’s programming.

With The Night Season, we have a so-so play by a promising writer whose ideas are still finding a foundation. Let’s just hope in the future, it’s one we haven’t seen before.

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