Lake George
Written and Directed by Daniel Blick
Produced by Telos Ensemble
Chain Theatre | 312 West 36th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10018
March 5th–16th, 2025
There are few who can masterfully tap into the psyche of the nature of human relationships through dialogue. Writer/director Daniel Blick is a voice to be celebrated in his exquisite underlying tones of hurt, betrayal, and cursed missed opportunities in his play, Lake George. As the play begins, we are immediately drawn into the hidden resentments of a wife, Clara, with her direct dismissal and lack of patience with her husband, Tom. We have all been here before—the pain, resentment, frustration, and castigation we may have experienced or consoled friends through, the familiar and unbearable pain. Clara, in not so many words, shuts down her husband's attempts to bond over reciting his preliminary writing of his second novel with a very firm stance: “I don’t like it.” She relates her reasons for not doing so by the meredismissal of simply not liking it. Already, we can sense Clara is checked out of the moment or, possibly worse yet, the marriage.
In a moment of surprise, Tom stumbles onto the floor from his broken chair to the point where one wonders how the chair so perfectly collapses into pieces and how skilled the actor is to avoid any potential breakage. The chair collapsing is a central metaphor for the further unraveling of what is to come in a family holiday turned into a bitter family feud. The cross everyone has to bear is Clara’s sister, Alana. Alana storms center stage with an illness plagued with so much misunderstanding, disregard, blame, resentment, and guilt… addiction. The bitter pill of addiction is one the playwright makes us all in the audience uncomfortably swallow. We grapple with the hollowness, the dread of helplessness conjuring up as we see a whirlwind of Alana in relation to everyone. Her father, Johnathan, willfully rents an Airbnb at Lake George, wanting to bring his family together, but as the play unravels, the family dynamic is torn apart by burdens past.
The play examines how our childhood truly creates the potential of who we become. Even as parents, as we age, we morph into becoming vastly different with time. Johnathan’s daughters, after so many years, still struggle with the fact that their father and mother are divorced. Without any warning, the trip to Lake George has an unwelcome surprise: Johnathan’s new lover, a man 30+ years his junior, as a houseguest.
Daniel Blick delicately weaves layer upon layer of so many realities that the audience gasps, laughs, and cries within the entire span of the play. Time quickly flies by as we engage in seeing how the play tackles issues for everyone. In his unbiased approach in Lake George, the 2 playwright’s magnificent craft is revealed through his dialogue as it encapsulates humanity in such a manner that it does not placate the obvious or hideously overdone stereotypes. Blick takes a commonplace theme of family dynamics to shed light on a unique perspective that keeps an audience enveloped—most importantly, allowing actors to each have their moments to truly showcase their talents in such a compelling way. It is truly an actor’s delight to have a script rich with allegory, testimony, and a reflection on trials and tribulations.
Certain works of art ask you to be a participant in the examination of life, and to quote Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Lake George does just that. The delicate moments of life are nuanced in the simplicity of day-to-day actions. We are brought out of the numbness of life to embrace the pain and come face to face with it. Come as an audience to arrive at Lake George and see yourself through the eyes of the play, transformed by the perplexing nature of life in relation to self.
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Review by Bianca Lopez.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on March 11th, 2025. All rights reserved.