Hello Failure

Description
The title Hello Failure is too hard on itself: Kristen Kosmas’s new play, a wobbly exercise in the school of realist whimsy, is more like Hello—So Close! or Hello, Keep About Half. The piece stays loyal to its subgenre’s precepts, which lean on the bewitching oddity of everyday speech, but gets the texture right at the cost of content. Director Ken Rus Schmoll’s no-frills production boasts a spectacular ensemble, but the play’s hermetic heroine, Rebecca (played thinly by the playwright herself) never gains a grasp on our sympathies, and Kosmas settles for an air of wistfulness, frittering away the propulsive qualities of her superb dialogue.—Helen Shaw