Richard Thomas And Anika Noni Rose Battle Thy Neighbor In David Lindsay-Abaire Comedy

While The Balusters is never less than entertaining, the play suffers in comparison to similar recent Broadway works, notably The Minutes and, especially, Eureka Day, both of which had sharper laughs and singular executions. Eureka Day, in particular, found its universality in the specificity of its liberal, well-to-do day-school officials and the panic that the hot topic of vaccines unleashed. The characters in The Balusters, despite an unassailable cast led by Richard Thomas, Anika Noni Rose, Margaret Colin and the delightful Marylouise Burke, never reach that level of pinpoint precision, its characters as often as not seeming little more than voices for their demographics, as uni-dimensional as the poster board demonstrating exactly where that stop sign should go regardless of which hypocrite stands to benefit.