Fathers & Sons

Richard Hoehler’s Fathers & Sons is a cornucopia of paternal and filial angst, rage, love, patience, loss and understanding among six pairs of young men and their father figures. But the author, who also plays the dads, tries to wring every bit of emotion out of his stories. That doesn’t leave much fresh air for his characters to breathe and, as a result, scenarios as familiar as the generic title stymie his investigation of this primal relationship.

It’s too bad, because Hoehler has a knack for amusing banter. He and Edwin Matos Jr. interact with a becoming ease as they shift from their self-named main characters into an alcoholic father and son, a gay teacher and his student, an uncle and his developmentally disabled nephew, and others. A struggling middle-aged actor, Richard rails at his younger protégé, who seems only cursorily devoted to his craft, but differences of class, ethnicity and sexual orientation give way to revelations about their relationship and their own parental baggage.

Director Chris Dolman ratchets up the soapy melodramatics of lines like, “You blew it every night you were at the bar instead of at home with me,” but the production hits high points thanks to Matos’s stirring depiction of the nephew, who learns he’ll have to leave his beloved uncle’s home. Still, in this play, as in most families, such emotionally genuine moments are hard to find.—Diane Snyder

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