Basilica

The Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has scored again, following the success of Jesse Eisenberg's wonderful "The Revisionist" with Mando Alvarado's "Basilica," a masterful new play supported by a uniformly exceptional cast, enlightened direction and the best technical design this side of the real thing.

Once again performing at the Cherry Lane Theater, which is located in the labyrinth of Greenwich Village, where maps go to die and only liars never get lost, "Basilica" is less leafy but offers a more direct route to something satisfying.

The plot isn't exactly original. It mixes not-quite-equal parts Miller and Durrenmatt, to arrive at a narrative that won't need much explaining. The return of a prodigal figure is thumb-printed against the dynamic of a family struggling to let its eldest son leave the nest, in search of "something different."

The play also has the feel of what would have been an admirable spinoff back in "The Cosby Show" era, with a stern but very lovable patriarch as played by Felix Solis. In less deft hands the character would be just shy of horrifying, given his profane mouth and heavy drinking. But Solis finds the humanity (and hilarity) of the man with ease, and there will be no need to alert Children's Services.

Sometimes the actors lean into the funny lines with more shoulder than necessary, and some of those lines are lifted clich�s ("Don't let your mouth write a check your body can't cash."). But when taken as a whole, the play is so great that all sins are forgiven.

The closest thing to an exception is Jake Cannavale, son of Bobby, who has apparently just inherited a pair of footsteps to follow. He's making his stage debut with "Basilica," and it sort of shows. He proves he has talent, just not much presence. His performance would be stronger if aided by close-ups and a long-focus lens, but he's a long way from ruining the play.

It would be unfair to heap criticism on the lad just because his dad is a darling. But given that this NYC, after all, and every little girl who got cut from "Annie" still showed up with enough jazz and tap to build an aerobics district in Harlem, it must be acknowledged that even teenagers have competition when it comes to an Equity stage. And to hold your own along pros at the level of "Basilica," it would be a good idea to have some above-average chops.

But not to worry. Unless Cannavale the Younger gets distracted by architecture or pre-med once he gets to college this fall, he'll probably develop just fine the more he faces an audience (but if we're putting it to a vote, we'd rather have another architect or doctor than another scion, please).

Sound designer Jane Shaw is also taking her first Rattlestick bow, and anyone with a technical team to assemble should prepare her for many an encore. As a native of Kansas, she expertly breathes non-urban sounds into the laps of New Yorkers who need a cicada season to know what nature sounds like. The play is set in south Texas, and the hum and buzz of ambient life, the crack of heat and the frigid echo of a chapel sealed in stone, all fold into a wonderful layer hovering over the production. It's never distracting or intrusive, and serves as the perfect touchstone for those moments when some jerk's cell phone goes off. Indeed, it's rather surprising that they get reception this deep into Texas.

Shaw is matched in every way by Raul Abrego's marvelous, multifunctional set design. Alvarado has refused to confine his play to one setting, and Abrego follows the action step by step with scenography that brilliantly stitches a front porch to a front room, and then unravels out all over town, shepherded symbolically overhead by intuitive use of negative space.

That's what is so terrific about "Basilica," if one has to boil it down. The layering. There's not much on offer from anyone that lacks dimension and depth. Alvarado has a vivid imagination and doesn't shortchange any of his characters. Some of them take a while to establish as more than mere foils, and act two doesn't quite measure up to the perfection of the first half. But there's a sense of authenticity about the production that rings supreme, and we're happy to take the long route home just for the pleasure of a few more moments in the company of these people.

But this last point regarding authenticity does lead to a question, not to be confused with a critique. All the characters in the play are Hispanic and so, it seems, is everyone they know. According to Wikipedia, the town in which the play is set is more than 95 percent Latino. And despite the accents on display, they seem to speak an awful lot of English when alone together.

Perhaps it's the necessity of attracting a mainstream crowd, perhaps it's the barrage of headlines about the demographic changes headed our way. But one wonders if a Spanish version of the play exists, and if so, which came first. Fluent City doesn't even have my deposit yet, so any more authentic than this and the evening would have been the dramaturgical version of Montezuma's Revenge. So it will be interesting to see how those demographic predictions will alter American theater if true.

But if this is the sort of thing that companies like Repertorio Espanol have been up to, then we've missed a lot of good stuff.