In David Lindsay-Abaire’s Wonder of the World, people are
crushed by innocuous things—pillows, peanut butter—and
small decisions backfire in large ways. Lindsay-Abaire, who won a
Pulitzer for drama this year, traffics in brutal sympathy: Our human
irregularities are forgivable, but they’re still totally fucking
weird.
Cass Harris (Gigi Jhong) is packing to leave her husband, Kip,
because she discovered his secret—something harmless but gross.
The grossness of the secret (which I will leave you to discover on your
own) is only part of the problem; Cass is more shaken by the distance
it implies: “I had no secrets. Nothing extra inside me.” As penance,
all Kip can offer is a cold, quivering aspic (“TRY THE FUCKING
ASPIC!”). It’s not enough.
Armed with a list of life goals (“ask big questions”; “make friends
with a clown”) and a suicidal, barrel-toting, alcoholic sidekick (Lois,
played by Ellen Dessler), Cass heads for Niagara Falls. She is manic
and scattered, but kind of happy. She meets a lot of other people,
whose lives are also broken. The play ends in group therapy, which ends
in The Newlywed Game.
Lindsay-Abaire’s script is snide and funny and sweetly meta in all
the right places (“Hey, you want to strike up a conversation?”); the
production is competent, if rough around the edges. ReAct Theatre
(which also produced Lindsay-Abaire’s Kimberly Akimbo in 2005)
leans rather heavily on the comedy—Wonder‘s dramatic
moments are frail. But it doesn’t really matter. Life is problematic;
problems are for laughing at; laughing makes for good theater.
Wonder of the World is good. 
