A New York Banker returns to his family’s Cincinnati home with wads of cash and a secret that’s about to rock their world in Dead Accounts, Theresa Rebeck’s darkly comedic look at the Red State-Blue State divide, now getting a terrifically acted Southern California Premiere at San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre.

It’s been fifteen years since 30something Jack Leonard (Doug Mattingly) made his escape from the Midwest to The Big Apple with nary a look back.

No wonder then that his sister Lorna (Selena Price) is surprised to find her older bro on their parents’ doorstep tonight bearing a half-dozen pints of ice cream purchased at the local Graeter’s.

Well, perhaps purchased isn’t quite the right word given than Jack paid the store’s night custodian a thousand bucks to let him take out as much ice cream as he could carry, an exchange Jack terms “free market” but that Lorna sees as stealing (and immoral to boot), the first but hardly the last time the Cincinnati-born-and-bred Rebeck points out how different folks in the middle are from those back east.

Not that Lorna is all that enamored of her fellow Ohioans (she dubs the miserable, mean, and stupid), but Jack insists that compared to New Yorkers, Midwesterners are downright peaceful and content.

As to what’s brought Jack back to Cincinnati, it could be his father’s health (Dad’s dealing with for the eighth time with the pain of passing a kidney stone), though if you suggest to Jack and Lorna’s lifelong-Catholic mom Barbara (Gerry Fuentes) that she relieve her husband’s suffering with some Percocet or OxyContin, she’ll tell you pain is good so just let him deal with it.

Jack’s return could also have something to do with the wad of bills he pulls out of his pocket in an attempt to persuade Mom to let Dad see a specialist and not just any Medicare doctor.

Before we find out what’s up with that, however, Jack’s high school friend Phil (Karthik Srinivasan) shows up, still nursing a pathetic crush on Norma, only to find himself once again berated by her brother for never having left Ohio for headier climes.

Doug’s estranged wife Jenny (Casey O’Keefe) makes an unexpected, unannounced visit as well, the old-money New York blonde well aware of Jack’s secret and not above taking advantage of it for her own monetary gain.

It’s not until Act One’s dramatic fadeout that we find out just how many millions Jack now calls his own or how he got his hands on all that dirty filthy money.

After that, all bets are off as to who’s going to end up with what.

Dead Accounts flopped badly on Broadway a half-dozen years after the financial crisis of 2007–2008, whether because playwright Rebeck hid her points rather too deeply beneath the play’s scattered plot to be easily discerned or because it was a half-dozen years ahead of its time.

Whatever the case, if you dig deep enough, Dead Accounts has plenty to say about the root causes of the Midwest’s disenchantment with The American Dream as witnessed in Election 2016, and at Little Fish, it does so in the most entertaining and energizing of ways.

Director Branda Lock elicits five absolutely fabulous performances, from Mattingly’s manic marvel of a Jack to Price’s sad-sack delight of a Norma to Fuentes’s long-suffering-and-loving-it Barbara to Srinivasan’s heart-of-the-heartland Phil to O’Keefe’s hard-edged ice queen of a Jenny, each of whom aces the challenges of making Rebeck’s very specific punctuation and ellipses sound natural and spontaneous.

Scenic designer Tristan Griffith’s terrifically detailed Cincinnati suburban living room and kitchen (kudos shared with Lock’s Cincinnati food-related and other properties), Bruce Starrett’s subtly effective lighting (including a stunning final fadeout effect), MarLee Candell’s just-right East Coast-meets-Midwest costumes, and Mattingly’s scene-linking, effects-providing sound design are all first-rate, and Srinivasan’s Bollywood t-shirt is a subtle reminder than not all Midwesterners have European roots.

Dead Accounts is produced by Aaron Fish. Aileen Kamoshita is stage manager.

Entertaining and engaging throughout, Dead Accounts is worth seeing for its acting ensemble alone. Dig deeper and you may just find some thought-provoking commentary what ails America today.

Little Fish Theatre, 777 Centre St. San Pedro.
www.littlefishtheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
May 26, 2019
Photos: Mickey Elliot

Tags: Little Fish Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theresa Rebeck