Local Theater world premiere of David Myers’ play is a stunner

Recently, my youngest son beat the pants off me in Monopoly — which he always does. Turns out it was good prep for us to see David Myers new play 237 Virginia Ave. The production by Local Theater Company being staged at the Denver Savoy is an unflinching look at the cruelty of the American housing situation depicted by a father and son in a fierce struggle over the old man’s home.

As the two play their own cutthroat game of Monopoly, they also shift back in time from 400 years ago to present day to illustrate other white guys in history chasing their own version of that American dream. It’s always focused on the acquisition of land, mostly at the expense of the BIPOC population.

Though billed as a dark comedy, the laughs up front increasingly give way to a grim pugilism between the father, Rex (Lawrence Hecht) and the son, Eric (Jacob Dresch). Both are tremendous in the roles, gripping the audience with performances that range between comic hyperbole and resentment-packed hyper realism.

Listen to our podcast interview with Lawrence Hecht and Jacob Dresch

Co-directed by Local founder Pesha Rudnick and Nick Chase, Local’s co-artistic director, the world premiere of 237 Virginia Avenue is a beautifully crafted play that hits hard without being overtly preachy. Myers’ script has been in development with Local for two years, including a workshop reading with John Lithgow in the Rex role and another reading at the Durango Play Fest.

What’s on stage now at the Denver Savoy is clearly the product of a lot of tweaking, the result of which is an airtight script that delivers its final, damning punch so decisively that there could be no other way to end it.

Jacob Dresch (L) and Lawrence Hecht in ‘the world premiere of ‘237 Virginia Ave’ at the Denver Savoy | Photo: Graeme Schulz

One plot of land

Almost all of the action in 237 Virginia Avenue takes place on a single piece of land in Virginia. The exception is the duo’s first trip back in time — 400 years ago in England, where a penniless nephew (Dresch) looking for a loan to head to the New World can only squeeze £6 out of his tightwad uncle (Hecht). It’s the first in a series of exchanges between the older man with wealth and property exercising the power they bring over the younger.

We later see them as Virginia frontiersmen fighting off an attack by Native Americans, with Hecht’s character appalling the younger man with his bloodthirsty, transactional approach to defending what he’s got. Later, the same land is used in the slave trade by a similarly unapologetic older man looking to wring every bit of value out of the property.

In present day, the pair are playing Monopoly in an aggressive manner echoing the characters in the past. It’s no game, with cold calculation guiding every roll of the dice and the father and son showing zero remorse when they grind the other down. It’s a perfect parallel between what the characters are confronting in their own lives, with each needing something from the other — and both reluctant to give an inch.

Photo: Graeme Schulz

Power players

Playing the under-employed and over-educated son, Dresch is at the top of his game. As a comic actor, he wowed audiences last summer in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of One Man, Two Guvnors. Here, he uses that comic energy to portray a wound-up young man seething with resentment that he can’t afford to buy a home for his family.

His most devastating scene from the past is playing a sleazy real estate broker working on a younger Rex to buy a home in the late ’80s. It’s red-lining at its nastiest, as the broker grows increasingly explicit about the types of people they want in the neighborhood — and those they don’t. It’s an us-vs.-them argument that today looks appalling but was taken for granted in generations past.

As a worn-down Rex scratches his signature on the contract, we can’t help but sympathize with him as someone just trying to do the best he can for his family within a system over which he has little control. He may not like the agent’s stark assessment, but if there’s a place to be scrupulous here without giving up what he wants, he can’t see it.

Hecht, too, brings his A-game to the part, expertly showing us a father who really does love his son but who’s so steeped in the way things were that he can’t help but beat him down. The Boomer prototype, Rex simply can’t grasp why people like Eric can’t do it on their own as his generation did.

From this vantage, 237 Virginia Avenue takes aim at the situation today’s young home seekers face. Eric represents those constantly foiled by forces aligned against them — particularly the Rexes of the world who can’t or won’t make available their needlessly large homes to the next generation.

But when his own health needs come into conflict with his desire to show his son a lesson, Rex must soften his position somewhat — a stance that revolts him even as he stands to gain from it.

The final brilliant scene finds father and son setting equally diabolical traps for each other. The climax comes as we see how Rex counters Eric’s own scheme with a fiendish choice between the younger man’s own best interests and the opportunity to rebel against the system that created 237 Virginia Avenue.

As what Rex has done dawns on Eric, the lights drop, the play is over and the audience is in an awed silence for a moment as it sinks in.

237 Virginia Avenue represents a unique opportunity to see an excellent new work in a small space and with a simply boffo two-man cast. Don’t miss it.