‘Labor Day’ Lacks the Punch of ‘Cocktail’

“Labor Day” is A.R. Gurney’s sequel to “The Cocktail Hour,” his finest play, and that would seem to be good news. In “The Cocktail Hour,” a man comes home to tell his sister and elderly parents that he has written a play about them. For these upper-class characters, cocktails smooth the way to spotty intimacy even as they serve their primary function as a means of emotional avoidance. The play’s real subject, however, is neither the properties of alcohol nor even the social rituals of the WASP set Gurney is famous for chronicling. Between its shapely jokes, “The Cocktail Hour” depicted the primal struggle of a grown son still looking for approval from a distant father.

“Labor Day” premiered Thursday at the same theater--the Old Globe in San Diego--that opened “The Cocktail Hour,” and with the same director, Jack O’Brien. John (Josef Sommer) is now elderly himself, in remission from cancer, and liable to cry at the drop of a hat, particularly at any thought of his cherished family. This time John is writing about his other family--his wife, four children and his six grandchildren. If the schema and plot of “Labor Day” are similar to “The Cocktail Hour,” nothing else is. “Labor Day” is built on sand; it has no discernible reason for being.

This is sad news, because Gurney is a terrific writer. But here he says virtually nothing about his twin passions, theater and family, even if his characters talk incessantly about these things. The motor of the play is a visit from a young director named Dennis (Brooks Ashmanskas), who has come to John’s rambling Connecticut estate at the end of the long Labor Day weekend. On the brink of financial disaster, Dennis believes that John’s new play could hit pay dirt; the manuscript has caught the attention not only of Seattle Rep and the Shubert Organization, but Robert Redford as well.

So, the pressure is on, but Dennis believes the play’s ending is sappy. He wants a darker conclusion (as several critics wanted of “The Cocktail Hour”), which he feels will be truer to the play. And he’ll enlist anyone he can to help him, including all of the other onstage characters, John’s big-lug son Ralph (James Colby), his astringent daughter Ginny (Veanne Cox) and his protective wife Ellen (Joyce Van Patten).

We know what Dennis wants, but what does John want and what does everyone else want? These questions go begging, or change nonsensically, throughout the evening. It’s a mark of how untethered this play is that Ellen ends the first act imploring John not to write about his children--though he’s expressed nothing but fondness for them at all times--even threatening to leave him if he does. In the second act she takes a quick look at the play and is suddenly determined that all of her children should be included in the play so that no one feels left out.

Further, Dennis’ ideas about how to fix the play are so errant, vague and lame that it’s incredible he could go around expressing respect for the theater as his only family and home. To conclude the play, Dennis has determined, John’s protagonist must leave his wife and “reach out” to one of three things: human rights, the environment or political upheaval. “The Shuberts,” Dennis says of the most commercial producers in history, “suggest Rowanda.” If this is a farce or if Dennis is supposed to be an idiot, Gurney has not made that clear.

Gurney does not afford the grown children in this play anywhere near the rich motives and complicated lives he gave to the brother and sister in “The Cocktail Hour.” Ralph is a sweet, unsophisticated lug right out of central casting, complete with a backward baseball cap and an urge to beat up any guy making a pass at his sister. Ginny comes running to her dad if Ralph won’t let her play tennis, and she gets very, very hurt when Ralph calls her Little Hitler. It’s as if Gurney is insisting that his own grown children not have adult concerns and problems. A late-breaking offstage drama for an offstage daughter only seems tacked on and silly.

The fine actor Sommer has very little to do except grin after each fond remark or cry. He delivers two speeches--one about the obligation of the rich to help the poor, the other about theater as an island of civility--both of which seem stranded, unattached to the rest of the play.

“Labor Day” has the feel of an early draft, one much more precarious than the play Dennis comes calling to talk about. And the ending is not the problem. The characters need through-line motivations that will drive them and this play someplace worth going.

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* “Labor Day,” Old Globe Theatre, Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, Balboa Park, San Diego, Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 15. $22-$39. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Josef Sommer: John

Brooks Ashmanskas: Dennis

Joyce Van Patten: Ellen

Veanne Cox: Ginny

James Colby: Ralph

An Old Globe Theatre production. By A.R. Gurney. Directed by Jack O’Brien. Sets Ralph Funicello. Costumes Michael Krass. Lights Kenneth Posner. Sound Jeff Ladman. Stage manager Lurie Horns Pfeffer.