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# Dysfunctional family lives happily ever after
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/dysfunctional-family-lives-happily-ever-after/
- Published: 2008-08-09T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:40:20.000Z
- Author: Cynthia Citron
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Resolutions just don’t ring true in ‘Pen’*

THE MOTHER IS IN A WHEELCHAIR, HER emotions and spirit as withered as her legs. The victim of her unceasing abuse is her son, a bewildered, eager-to-please young man who will soon be going to college — but not to the movies, as his mother perversely refuses him the use of her car.

“Seeing a movie by yourself is embarrassing!” she tells him. The father, not surprisingly, has already left the family.

The relationships between this angry and dysfunctional threesome form the plot line for David Marshall Grant’s play, “Pen,” now having its west coast premiere at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, under the superb direction of Jeff G. Rack.

The setting is New York City in the last months of 1969, a time whose turbulent events and distinctive music are established as the play begins with actual sound bites from radio and television broadcasts of the period.

As the play opens, the mother, Helen, played with bitter passion by Jill Remez, is nagging her son, obsessing over the loss of a special NASA-designed, zero-gravity pen that allows her to write while lying down.

Her son Matt (excellently played by 17-year-old Dennis Bendersky) yoyos between sympathetic concern and passive-aggressive rebellion: when he finds the pen, he stealthily pockets it and allows her to go on obsessing.

One of the bones of contention between this mother and son is that she is insisting that he apply to a university on Long Island, so that he will remain close by.

His father, on the other hand, is pressuring him to apply to USC, his own alma mater, and is not very subtly bribing him with the promise of a brand new car.

The father, Jerry, (Robert Mackenzie) is a different kind of nag: jovial and seemingly affable, he can squeeze his tormented son as effectively as Helen can.

Matt eventually holds his own, however, in a scene where he finally erupts in a shouting match with his mother, (“You make everything seem impossible,” he roars), and the major theme of the play is then explored more thoroughly. Namely, how do our connections with the people we love affect us, both emotionally and physically? Can we become so close to our loved ones that we absorb their negative energy? And how do we break those bonds so that we can get on with our own life?

In the end, though, playwright Grant supplies metaphysical answers which, to some extent, begs the questions and derails the play.

Further, the subsequent 180 degree change in Helen’s character is inexplicable, unlikely, and unconvincing. So in the end we are left disappointed and dissatisfied because the playwright has supplied resolutions that just don’t ring true.

“Pen” will continue at Theatre 40, alternating in repertory with Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers,” Monday through Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., through Aug. 31\. Theatre 40 is located in The Reuben Cordova Theatre on the campus of Beverly Hills High School, 241 S. Moreno Dr., in Beverly Hills. Call (310) 364-0535 for the performance schedule and reservations.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 9, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/080908.pdf?ref=smdp.com)