Alexis
Soloski

January 22, 2015

In Maggie Bofill’s domestic comedy Winners, co-produced by the Ensemble Studio Theater and the Radio Drama Network, the home fires have guttered. At the Mackeys’ suburban abode, the unemployed dad, Brian, slumps in his robe, cooking inedible meals. The overworked mom, Mabel, receives racy texts from her boss. Tommy, a teenager, loses his after-school job for smoking pot, and little Gabby’s proposal for the Christmas play involves an awful lot of stage blood. The cat, Marie Antoinette, mewls, “Nothing is as it’s supposed to be.” The dog, Buck, might agree if he weren’t busy vomiting chicken and Legos onto the living room floor. Ms. Bofill has written a sweetly intended exploration of how we care for and forsake one another. But it’s overlong and overindulgent, vices that the director, Pamela Berlin, and the cast can’t correct. Combining realism and absurdism has worked for recent Ensemble Studio Theater comedies like Year of the Rooster and the Broadway-bound Hand to God, The elements join more mawkishly here.