Jack Goes Boating

After an enjoyable, albeit slow, first act, all I could think was how misleading the poster for Jack Goes Boating is. Yes, Jack is a shy and awkward limo driver (excellently portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman), and yes, the girl that he's fallen for (Beth Cole) seems to be hiding something beneath her fear of intimacy. But none of that makes the show dark: if anything, the scenes where Jack's best friend, Clyde (John Ortiz), teaches him to swim are heartwarming and bright, as if to remind us that there are still good people in the world. And although he confesses that Lucy (an appropriately bouncy Daphne Rubin-Vega) isn't as perfect a wife as she seems (he can't get over an affair she had with a man he calls 'The Cannoli'), he's perfectly happy to lose himself in the purple haze they all like to smoke. I don't mind the loose ends; the purple haze of the play is enjoyable enough, and though we don't learn anything about the darkness just under the surface that Peter Dubois teases us with, I'm content with the sweet aftertaste of a well-done production.

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