The Jean Dalrymple award-winning Four Men on a Couch Returns to the ATA

It’s a modern-day Odd Couple with a twist: Three Felix Ungers are kicked out by their partners on one fateful night. With nowhere else to go, they arrive at the home of their own Oscar Madison, Norman (Alan Walls). Norman is an alcoholic with a history of domestic abuse whose fed-up wife had left with their daughter some time ago, leaving him in an apartment that has become unintentionally minimalist: an old couch, a table, and a few other chairs. Fortunately, this leaves plenty of room for the liquor and beer that Norman and his fellow outcasts pull from to drown their sorrows. The three rejected men arrive one by one in in a riotously funny “guess what happened to me” sequence. Jesse (Laquan Hailey), a caseworker for the Department of Welfare, knocks first, after his girlfriend Peaches has cut up most of his wardrobe (some of which he borrowed from his friends). He is followed shortly by debt-ridden cab driver Sidney (Kevin Leonard) and police officer Ira (Rommell Simmons). Norman accepts them all into his modest abode, and the men fight, bond, and repeat over copious amounts of booze. Norman tries to be a gracious daddy to his unexpected new family though they continuously exasperate him. The four men are desperately trying to be better, but old habits and triggers, and the very unfairness of life, continuously try to take them down.

When Ira, whose girlfriend has left him for a woman, leaves to confront her, things take a devastating turn, and Act 2 flips the vibe from comedy to tragedy. Ira comes to terms with terrible recent events, and his trauma-triggered subsequent actions threaten his and his friend’s very lives. The resulting climax is shocking and stays with you, a testament to the insightful brilliance of the playwright and cast.

Written and directed powerfully by the award-winning Anne L. Thompson-Scretching, Four Men on a Couch is plotted so hard it sings. It swings from heartwarming to hilarity to grief to horror and back again in a way that feels genuine to the human experience. The actors are collectively brilliant in their well-defined rolls, the tension between them simmering and then exploding in ways that are true to their individual personalities and how they relate to each other.

Four Men on a Couch is a presentation of The American Theater of Actors and Shining Star Productions.