Up

Description
Sixteen years after taking flight in a balloon-rigged lawn chair, Walter Griffin spends his days sketching designs for flying machines, trying to recapture his brief glory. His 15-year-old son Mikey meets Maria, 16, six months pregnant and aggressively precocious. Famed tightrope walker Philippe Petit visits Walter's daydreams. Up isn't as cloyingly, whimsically quirky as this may sound. Playwright Bridget Carpenter writes some lovely domestic scenes, and her thematic resonances play out clearly in Anna D. Shapiro's well-calibrated production. But a bit too much remains half-composed in Carpenter's script.—KV