A scene from Kin. Photo by Joan Marcus.

The mythical, love-at-first-glance meeting between couples is the cornerstone of all romantic comedies. But for young Columbia professor Anna (Kirsten Bush) and Irish trainer Sean (Patch Darragh), their story spans several decades, across multiple states and countries, and follows not only their union, but the coming together of people so different it could only be described as fate.

Kin, written by Bathsheba Doran and directed by Sam Gold, follows the lengthy courtship of these two unlikely characters through snapshots of their lives and the lives of those around them. In the end, we see not only the development of an unlikely couple, but the union of two families each coming to terms with their pasts and embracing a more hopeful future.

The word that most comes to mind when thinking of Kin is ambitious. The show encompassed multiple decades and included even more scene changes. The simplicity of the set—a plain, white, rotatable room with one wall missing—not only connected the scenes together but also made the plotline less confusing to follow. The setup was different enough to allow the audience to differentiate between scenes but simple enough to allow the focus to be placed on the actors and not the background.

With the focus on the actors, several characters clearly outshined their intended roles. One of whom is the spastically comedic best friend, Helena (Laura Heisler), whose externalization of her psychological paranoia provides the perfect foil to Bush’s bland and emotionally lacking performance. Though Helena served as more of a side story, her insecurities—revealed by her close attachment to both her dog and her best friend Anna—are the most poignant.

Unfortunately, Anna’s and Sean’s relationship, the supposed focus of the play, is less emotionally moving; the few scenes in which they interact with one another feel distant and forced. Though it is apparent that previously psychological trauma has left irreparable emotional wounds, their relationship never develops beyond a mutual friendship and instead serves only to showcase stronger, more developed relationships.

One of these more relatable relationships is that of Anna and her father (Cotter Smith), whose busy military career has left the two on less than speaking terms. The awkward silences and rigid movement between the two during their Christmas reunion reveal more than their dialogue. Of all the issues presented, this one is the most developed.

Overall, the play was very fast paced, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats not due to excitement, but the need to keep up with and understand the events transpiring before them. Doran excellently weaves threads of intrigue into a backdrop of a mundane New Yorker navigating her convoluted life.

Unfortunately, the extended timeline made certain scenes, especially tense and emotional moments, seem dragged on. Since the audience is never exposed to a single character for more than a few minutes, there is a lack of emotional connection. One takes on the role of a distant family friend, popping in during each new scene to check on the progress of the two families, only understanding what happened in the years in between through guess work. It isn’t until the very end that previous events being to connect.

Still, given the ambitious timeline, Kin successfully accomplished what it set out to do: unravel the underlying connections behind any relationship. It intertwined the emotional battles of multiple generations and turned it into the union of two scarred but hopeful individuals. In the end, when the separate scenes fell into place to create one coherent love story, two wrongs did make a right.