Frank D. Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses” is the quintessential kitchen-sink drama. It’s the sort of play that takes place largely around a kitchen table, with much discussion about scrambled eggs and waffles.
Though it won both the Pulitzer and several Tonys when it debuted in 1964, the play seems old-fashioned today. But its portrait of family dysfunction still packs a punch in this Pearl Theatre revival.
Much of the credit goes to Amy Wright (“Fifth of July,” “Noises Off”) who, in her directorial debut at the Pearl, has wrested gut-wrenching performances from her three-person cast.
The atmosphere hits you upon entering the theater, where the setting of a lived-in Bronx apartment and vintage radio broadcasts transport you back to the time just after World War II.
Grown son Timmy (Matthew Amendt) has just returned home after three years in the Army, only to find that the simmering tensions between his parents have begun to erupt.
The blustery father (Dan Daily), a businessman whose dream of becoming a millionaire was scuttled by the 1929 stock market crash, has come to dominate his long-suffering wife (Carol Schultz) who, like so many women of her time, subjugated her own desires for the sake of her family.
In the play’s most moving section, she tells her son how her fate was sealed years earlier when she met his father.
“In that moment I knew that the young man and I were not suited to each other,” she confesses. “And at the same time I knew we would become involved. That it was inevitable.”
What follows – the arguments over baseball, a visit to Grandma’s and, yes, even roses – seems mundane, but has the undeniable ring of truth. Daily and Schultz deliver such authentic performances that it’s easy to believe their characters have been together for decades.
Amendt, for his part, is moving as the grown son who must come to terms with the fact that the war at home is as devastating as the one from which he’s just returned.