Amy Herzog’s Belleville at the New York Theatre Workshop, first presented at the Yale Repertory Theater in 2011, is neither as complex in concept nor as far reaching in implication as her first two plays, After the Revolution and, in particular, 4000 Miles. Like her latest, The Great God Pan, it feels like a short story; but as such it is still a Herzog, tightly constructed and filled with fine-tuned dialogues, between a married couple, high-strung Abby and duplicitous Zak, performed by Maria Dizzia and Greg Keller, respectively, whose relationship unravels subtly but surely before our eyes. This is nominally a suspense but a very gentle one; it is one in which the melodrama is sheathed in crêpe de chine so that, paradoxically, our attention is drawn teasingly to the character’s failure to see or show deception rather than the horror of suspenseful events. Zak, who strives to conceal his troubled mind, which at first seems saner than Abby’s, but allows the truth to leak little by little, is engaging. It is a masterful art to behold -- Keller’s precise acting and Herzog’s exacting construction. The play’s single weakness, to me, was the ending with the two supporting characters, the couple who rents the apartment in a Paris suburb. It is a play that intrigues most the audience that is already familiar with Herzog’s plays. Amy Herzog, now 33, together with Annie Baker, a year younger, is without question among the best young playwrights today.
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