Sept. 11, 2001.
Everyone knows what happened on that fateful September morning.
Or do they?
After sitting through Yankee Tavern, Steven Dietz’s new drama now playing at Florida Stage, you’re not so sure. If you’re into conspiracy theories, Yankee Tavern will get all the conspiratorial juices inside of you flowing nicely. Unfortunately, the show premieres at time when the country is finally moving past the horrible events of 9/11.
Although solidly acted, Yankee Tavern feels a little dated. The show would’ve probably played better three or four years ago. Some theatergoers may be reluctant to see a stage production that still conjures up such bad memories. Remember how most of those recent 9/11 films bombed at the box office?

Yankee Tavern is set in an old watering hole in Lower Manhattan five years after the terrorist attacks. The bar is run by Adam (Antonio Amadeo), an idealistic young man who’s earning his master’s in international studies. Once out of school, Adam’s goal is to work for the CIA. Janet (Kim Morgan Dean) is Adam’s frustrated fiancée, a woman who’s fretting about last-minute wedding plans — and learning some disturbing truths about the man she thought she knew.
Both Adam and Janet spend much of the show listening to Ray (William McNulty), an affable barfly who spies a conspiracy in everything — 9/11, the 1969 moon landing, the 2000 election, even the institution of marriage.
In walks a stranger, a mystery man named Palmer (Mark Zeisler) who sits quietly (and ominously) while downing one Rolling Rock and ordering one for his invisible friend. Palmer doesn’t say much in the first act, but when he does open up in the second act, it’s clear he knows a little too much about those in the bar and what really happened on 9/11 not just what the government told us.
Yankee Tavern features a capable cast, led by McNulty, who plays Ray as zany and kooky, yet still sane enough where you can’t completely dismiss his more outlandish theories. Meanwhile Zeisler is effectively hitman sinister and X-Files mysterious despite briefly flubbing a few lines during Friday night’s opening performance.
Even though the acting is solid, Yankee Tavern is a bit of a letdown. While the questions Dietz’s crackling script raises about 9/11 will leaving you thinking (and Googling), after you leave the theater, he shoehorns in too many distracting subplots (including a ghost story!) that takes away from the play’s juicy central theme.