Flyovers – 1998
Dan Zeff, writing for the Copley News Service gave it **** and wrote (in part):
Jeffrey Sweet writes wonderful plays in miniature.
Flyovers is prime Sweet and it’s receiving a superlative production at the Victory Gardens Theatre.
The play runs 90 minutes without an intermission, enough time to run the emotional changes from nostalgia to seduction to tense verbal fencing to physical violence.
The play eventually shows how decent, if flawed, people can be driven to immoral acts through grim necessity.
The play also toys with the notion of celebrityhood and the idea that for the country’s cultural brokers, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and New York City are the only places that matter. Every place in between is merely a ‘flyover’ between power centers on each coast.
The play has plenty of laughs, but Ted’s abrasive personality injects a sense of lurking danger during even the lightest moments. We know there is going to be an emotional explosion, and it does come, but from an unexpected swerve in the plot.
Petersen is perfect as Ted — angry, jealous, resentful, but a caring husband and father and a man who feels he has a just grievance against society. Marc Vann, as always, gives a quietly insightful performance, this time as the success story who returns to the scene of his teen-aged persecution for reasons he may not completely grasp. Amy Morton re-validates her standing as one of the area’s most resourceful and convincing actresses. She plays Iris with a wonderful blend of articulate self-knowledge, resignation, and regret. Linda Reiter has only a short time to etch her portrait of the disturbed Lianne, but she delivers a flawless cameo of a woman on the brink of mental dysfunction. Dennis Zacek, an old hand with a Jeffrey Sweet script, orchestrates a beautifully modulated production.
