WHAT IT MEANS TO "SETTLE" - KIN AT PLAWRIGHTS HORIZON

It is a deflating day that when adult children realize their parents are just human --  mere mortals, part saint and sinner.  Every child feels they have a right to pursue their dream of happiness, but when it comes to their  parents if it doesn't fit the idea of the perfect nuclear family in Bathsheba Doran's new play, KIN, currently in production at Playwrights Horizon, it's a reason for pain and petulance.

Broadly, KIN is about the courtship of Anna and Sean, a Columbia English Professor and physical trainer, respectively.  Two kids trying to make it in the big city.  We meet their parents and friends, and in episodic vignettes (the theatrical shortcut equivalent to looking directly at the camera to comment on the action, that is so cheap and prevalent on comic television right now) watch their relationship form.

Sean is from Ireland, Anna from Texas. Anna is distant from her father, but puts on a good show until discovering that her dead mother wanted to divorce him before she died.  Sean's mother was raped when he was 8...abandoned by Church and husband, she retreated into the safety of her home, not to walk out again until the exotic American Anna, arrives Xanax in hand some 20 years later.  Sean's reaction to his mother's agoraphobia was to move halfway around the world, as we keep being told by everyone except Sean.

Neither Sean nor Anna confess to be in love, and yet  with no other alternatives on the horizon, we watch them become willing to "settle."

The best moments of the play are with the older characters who conquered their settling issues a long time ago.  A poignant moment has Kay's father visiting the deathbed of a women he had an affair with for many years, played by the arresting Kit Flannigan.  When she holds Anna's voluminous new book, we see what can only be described as motherly pride.  Suzanne Bertish plays Sean's damaged, non-apologetic mother Linda.  One can only imagine what growing up in that house was like, but in his weekly phone calls home we don't see any bitterness from Sean and its through Ms. Bertish's layered performance that we understand why.

The set, designed by Paul Steinberg, is a big frame that moves as we change locales and continents.  With the notable exception of a very effective wedding scene set on the cliffs on the Ireland, it neither contributes or deters from the action.

Sam Gold's direction is hopscotch and his choices are not always clear.  Why, for the last 15 minutes, are all the characters on stage?  Nothing has really changed.  A side plot has Anna's best friend meditating in the woods with a realistic backdrop -- the only one we see during the course of the 1:45 hour, no intermission piece.  Why the need for trees?

KIN, I hope, is a work in progress with lots of potential.  Clearer direction and more focus on the main characters who define KIN will create a sharper, more lasting theatrical experience.