Play review of "Rx"

Kate Fodor finds an easy target in her new off-Broadway play, "Rx," when she satirizes the drug industry. Nowhere is the mockery as evident as in the character of Allison, the head of marketing, who is all smiles and exuberant energy.

The play, at Primary Stages, 59 E. 59th St., deals with a drug trial being conducted on a fictional pharmaceutical company, Schmidt Parma, that is testing a new drug, SP925, developed to treat workplace depression. Allison hopes that workplace depression will be considered a bona fide disease. When researcher Dr. Gray (Stephen Kunken) talks about uses for drugs, Allison, his boss, (well-played by Elizabeth Rich) notes the company will only makes drugs for people who can afford them.

Meena (Marin Hinkle), managing editor of Piggeries, an American cattle and swine magazine, becomes a willing participant for the study. The product takes a long time to have an effect on her and she keeps hoping, “Any second I may start to feel better.” (Perhaps she has the placebo?)

However, there is enough time for her to begin a relationship with Gray, a dour, depressed fellow himself. Actors Hinkle and Kunken are a well-matched couple and their relationship is believable and when they break up, he takes an experimental "heartbreak drug” with some disastrous results.

The drugs seem frivolous, especially when a minor character, Frances, played by the talented MaryLouise Burke, becomes ill with cancer. Meena meets Frances in the granny’s underwear section of a department store where she goes to cry. Burke, as the adorably naive, sweet old lady has a gentle voice and manner and is absolutely charming. However, her innocence and ultimate realization of lost opportunities doesn’t really fit in with the theme of the play.

The play offers some humor, but an extended foot joke goes on too long and becomes ridiculous. Earlier Meena, a prose poet, wrote a poem about feet. Some of the best visual humor is provided by Paul Niebanck in one of his two roles putting on rubber gloves and by the array of granny underwear hanging in the department store.

The play has some good lines and performances. There are funny moments but, like many other plays, "Rx" goes on long than necessary. I wonder if any drug companies are working on medicines for watchers of too-long plays. I’d sign up for the trial.