Review: ‘Parents in Chains’ Debuts With Wit & Wisdom at the New Vic

The following review is based on a cast whose collective run ends on March 16th. During the week of March 18th through the 23rd, Melora Hardin, Gildart Jackson, Sharon Lawrence, Joshua Malina, Gina Torres, and James Urbaniak will perform. For the week of March 25th through the 30th, John Ross Bowie, Rob Huebel, Sharon Lawrence, Loni Love, Jane Lynch, and James Urbaniak will take the stage.

Ensemble Theatre Company’s world premiere of Parents in Chains at the New Vic, written wittily and perspicaciously by Jay Martel (Key & Peele), is a rare and unique play that strikes just the right, topical tone as it is neither too anticipatory of a future that is yet to come nor behind the times in its commentary on the everlasting worry of parents, the dramatic relationships amongst couples and friends, and the modern way these individuals communicate their thoughts and frustrations — via text. Over the course of 75 uninterrupted minutes, these parents, portrayed by a crack cast of six (actors will slightly vary week to week), garner non-stop laughs with their intended (and unintended) buzz of retorts, connect emotionally, and impress with their relatable wisdom on the human condition, inured to the distraction of technology.

The production, which runs through only Sunday, March 30th, is beautifully simple in its execution. On stage there are only chairs, a bench, coffee mugs, and Ben Crop’s projections which include text-populated bubbles, GPS pins, and photos of four high-school graduate girls whose fretting L.A.-based parents are engaged in a tumultuous weekend of texting chains, 16 to be exact, as they exist enchained and at the mercy of the whereabouts and wellbeing of their daughters who have embarked on a celebratory trip to San Francisco before their beckoning adulthood. Michael Rathbun’s lighting equally spotlights the parents whose generalized anxiety that something potentially horrible may befall their children is turned up to eleven when a hurricane threatens the coast, necessitating a swift return laboriously tracked through location sharing and group chat. The unfolding of this accompanies further insights into the personalities, pasts, and philosophies of each parent.

Andy Fickman’s uncircumscribed direction liberates the characters, and the performers playing them, through sundry expressions, even as they quibble and seem anarchic during disagreements. The only catch here is that despite physically sharing the stage, they are, in story, never in the same room together. They’re on their phones (substituted with iPads on which the actors read their lines), texting furiously with varying degrees of accuracy.

Martel’s writing is comically ruthless in poking fun at Gen X’s lack of texting grace, the warped words of which are uproariously uttered out loud no matter how nonsensical. Every dot dot dot (indicating “typing”), awkward autocorrect, talk-to-text fail, misspelling, “crying cat face” emoji, punctuation, onomatopoeia, shortform word or phrase (e.g., “TY”), and “unsend message” is verbalized as a play-by-play with an appropriately slight unease conveying a determination by a generation to adapt to contemporary resources in an effort to close the communication gap with their digital-aged descendants.

Diane (Jorja Fox) is a staid stay-at-home mom interminably proud of daughter Sawyer who is starting Princeton in the fall; her hubby Connor (Thomas Sadoski) is a “bro” lawyer who habitually texts while driving. Muriel (Melora Hardin) is a Type-A business executive who epitomizes micromanaging behavior in seeing daughter Ava to safety; her husband Rick (Matt Walsh) is the laissez-faire and introverted opposite. Winona (Sharon Lawrence), a clay sculptor, is a recent and perhaps justifiably bitter divorcee who recollects how she and daughter Ashley, who is taking a gap year, have sometimes felt excluded. Lastly, Mark (Pete Gardner), an even-tempered community college professor, is a widower whose child Renata is among the girls being shepherded over text.

Fox perfectly inhabits the mom who perceives her daughter’s accomplishment of getting into a prestigious university as a reflection of her own merit and self-worth. Compared to her female peers, Diane is a little more composed and subtle in the way she communicates, not to mention she’s highly understanding of husband Connor who is digitally unintelligible most of the time. Fox captures Diane’s dedication even if the character seems unfulfilled beneath the surface.

Connor is the living apotheosis of texting so bad an interpreter is required; nonetheless, Sadoski garners the biggest guffaws with the rib-tickling delivery of his character’s messages even when some may argue the joke goes on for too long. Sadoski’s brilliance comes through in the “cray cray” obliviousness with which he pronounces gibberish (e.g., “they’re spitting up,” “we’re stall together,” “Bonkersfeld” meant as Bakersfield). We all know a person like Connor in our inner circle — someone who has, through texting blunders or other means, unwittingly earned a free pass for committing faux pas.

Hardin, renowned for playing Jan Levinson on The Office, is rousing as the perpetually panicked Muriel — a ball of nervous energy disguised by her corporate qualifications. Muriel, propelled by a boundless ego, has no filter, doesn’t validate opposing views, and readily entertains the absolute worst outcomes for Ava and the other girls; she gives no second thought to being judgmental and indiscriminate with her reactions, no matter the consequences. Through her presentation of this outrageous persona, Hardin is nevertheless delightfully charismatic and entertaining.

The two-time Emmy-nominated Matt Walsh depicts Rick who has no choice but to mentally retreat from his overbearing wife due to the stark absence of control. The gummies and Xanax-dependent Rick, a once-successful director, has become best friends with learned helplessness and regressed by not taking calls or answering doors anymore. Funny as such an admission may be, it speaks to deeper, unequivocally hurt layers that bleed through what is otherwise a comical turn. It is a realization that wouldn’t dawn on most if not for Walsh’s measured approach to the role.

The intensely likeable, SAG Award-winning Sharon Lawrence of NYPD Blue is the beleaguered Winona who voices grievances, which initially seem to be the result of a perceptual bias, but as the play pushes forward, become more evidence-based, and at the very least within the realm of plausible deniability. Lawrence’s fervency in materializing Winona makes her motivations feel urgent and resonant as she plaintively contemplates becoming a solo empty nester. Winona also becomes an audience favorite as she bares her heart, blithely refers to El Camino Real as the “royal road” the kids could take back to Los Angeles, and feverishly runs to and from the other characters with whom she has separate texting chains.

Pete Gardner of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, lastly, is the clearest headed authority in Mark who espouses empowering the daughters to make mistakes, within an unencumbered space, devoid of parents agitatedly scrutinizing their every move. Gardner imbues Mark with a humanity that balances a continued grief for his departed wife with sage observations, including how “no one wants to be reminded how temporary this is.” Through Mark, the audience is also reminded of the irony that, despite all our present-day devices intended for communication, we’re communicating less in terms of actual value exchanged with each other.

Ultimately, Mark’s reflections are at the center of Parents in Chains’ most profound revelations amidst the abundant chuckling it stimulates. It is the paradox of communication in 2025 and other contradictions plaguing parents, children, and simply people in general that playwright Martel humbles his audience with, even if the play’s ineluctable conclusion feels slightly drawn out.

Reasonable parents will always want the best for their children, to ensure their paths are free from error and pain. But this innate desire must be combined with the wisdom that the notion of control is forever an illusion, notwithstanding the tools parents can harness to incessantly stay at a virtual arm’s length from their children who, after a certain point, should be unfettered to figure things out on their own. Still, there is a comforting truth: parents’ fears, however “ducked” up, stem from devotion to their kids. Parents, along with their friends, can and should find the strength to let go through shared vulnerability.

Cover image caption: Sitting left to right are Pete Gardner, Sharon Lawrence, and Thomas Sadoski in the Ensemble Theatre Company’s world premiere of Parents in Chains at the New Vic in Santa Barbara, CA. Photo credit: Loren Haar

For more information and to purchase tickets to Ensemble Theatre Company’s world premiere of Parents in Chains at the New Vic, visit etcsb.com.