The Balusters (5*)

If David Lindsay-Abaire had listened to Jesus ("Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her") this set would have remained empty of its uniformly terrific ensemble cast, assembled to represent America's most diverse neighborhood association of equal-opportunity hypocrites locked in a battle between preservation and progress.  

Like newcomer Kyra (the ageless Anika Noni Rose), who hosts the meetings at her impeccably decorated upper-middle-class home, I needed Elliott (Richard Thomas, a native New Yorker), the association president, to explain the meaning of "baluster," an architectural term.  By the end of this intermissionless, two-hour dramedy--the kind that used to be the meat and potatoes of Broadway--it turns out that a vertical support for a porch railing can be wielded as a weapon, too, both literally and figuratively.

The Balusters also proves that all politics are local, as Tip O'Neill, a powerful Speaker of the House (remember them?), once famously proclaimed.  Elliott wants to stop a disabled resident of their landmarked neighborhood from installing historically inaccurate balusters; Kyra is more interested in solving a traffic problem she fears may endanger her children.  

Black and white horns lock. while alliances and zingers galore emerge among the association's membership who include an Asian lesbian (Jeena Yi) whose legal skills enable her to execute a long-overdue and wholly justified coup; a Jewish matron (Margaret Colin) who selects her maids based on their nationality and wears a rabbit fur coat to press the buttons of the association's youngest member, a politically correct heiress (Kayli Carter) who inspires a White Girl Tears wager; a not-yet doddering woman (Marylouise Burke) almost as old as the neighborhood; a macho Latino contractor (Ricardo Chavira, from Desperate Housewives) who probably voted for our current president; an almost-woke middle-aged teacher who might as well be named Caspar Milquetoast (Michael Esper); and a travel writer (Carl Clemons-Hopkins, from Hacks) whose gaydar seriously malfunctions, revealing his own prejudices.  Even though many in the group only vaguely recall meeting Kyra's new Filipino housekeeper (Marina-Christina Oliveras) she remembers their drink preferences and knows the meltdown secret of Elliot, her former employer.

Although Lindsay-Abaire stacks the deck heavily in Kyra's favor from the beginning, I found myself sympathizing more with Elliott for reasons that had less to do with the issues and motivations explored by the play or Kenny Leon's superb, fast-paced direction than the experience of watching it.  Like the former John Boy, I'm now an old white man, one who longs to sit in a theatre with an audience respectful enough to put their phones away during a live performance.  If it means picking up a baluster, so be it.