I have followed Ianthe Demos’s One Year Lease company for the past six years—in fact, I once even followed them to Athens for their performance of the Oresteia. While I have, for sure, enjoyed their reinterpretations of ancient Greek texts (though the sandbags in Antigone still make me cringe a little), and, as well, OYL’s ongoing commitment to contemporizing the subject matter to relevant political events—in much part due to Jessica Kaplow Applebaum’s insightful and in-cite-full dramaturgy—I have recently more enjoyed their work reviving classic plays: Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, for instance, allowed both the direction and acting to flourish without a millennial burden on their texts. Their recent New York premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s Reader, as part of this year’s Fringe Festival, was by far the most successful of any production to date, demonstrating both just how much perseverance to an ideal serves well the development of a company and the ongoing strength of One Year Lease.
Reader, a play that addresses the havoc government censorship (and personal ambition) wreaks in our lives through a dizzying, though not confusing, text-within-a-play-within-a-text format, takes on, not only the evils of government interference into the arts, but also how something as seemingly altruistic as ecoactivism might be misconstrued and misused to serve a larger dehumanizing project: Texts are banned based on a contrived ecological conservation—can’t waste trees on drivel (which, honestly, is not such a bad idea until one considers the overarching ramifications of who determines what isn’t drivel—think about, for instance, the NEA scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s that still plagues the arts today)—and, as well, the whole system is predicated on a utopic ideology of “happiness.” “If one isn’t happy one must be crazy—and dangerous” is an oft-quoted line throughout the play.
As always, One Year Lease’s set design, this time by James Hunting, is hauntingly beautiful—a sparse office, with a backdrop of torn pages (occasionally fluttering down from the wall) that outline a covered window through which spectral demons plague the present. Further, Mike Riggs’s lighting throughout is innovative and, truly, illuminating—which may seem obvious, but, unfortunately, is so often not—in its subtle nuance between what is happening in the present, what has happened in the past, and what is (un)certainly to come. I have to admit, I wasn’t terribly thrilled with Kay Lee’s costuming—what exactly was going on with The Man’s (Zach Griffiths) shaggy robe?—but for this to be the only fault, and a nitpicky one at that, is a remarkable feat.
The actors, Nico Evers-Swindell, Emma Jackson, Darrell James, Susannah Melone, Nick Stevenson, and Zach Griffiths, most playing several roles between the what-was-happening and what-was-written, were brilliant across the board—a testament to both their talent and Demos’s constantly superb direction. James’s descent into the text and into his own disillusionment was particularly impressive, adding another dimension to the many-layered performance by which one lost one’s own grounding in what was real, that is, on the page, and what was the manifestation of his increasing paranoid dementia. It is this aspect of the play, and the performance, that speaks the loudest from the stage; for what is political theatre, and art, if not a whirlpool of cultural dementia that isn’t necessarily paranoid in the slightest?
Dementia also plays out in Bryan Reynold’s Woof, Daddy, also featured in the Fringe. I fear I must take a moment to address Reynold’s bio, which begs pause.
Reynold’s research spans several disciplines, including critical theory, history, performance studies, social semiotics, philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and dramatic literature, especially of the English Renaissance. It focuses on the experience, articulation, and performance of consciousness, subjectivity, and sociocultural formations, particularly the ideologies, passions, and geographies that define them, both on and off the stage.
Bracketing, for the moment, the fact that I was under the impression that as a performance studies scholar I was, in
fact, already dealing with critical theory, this longwinded introduction to the writer served well for the longwinded, and, oh yes, rhyming philosophical platitudes offered by Richard Franklin/daddy (Jason Vande Brake) throughout the first quarter or so of the play. Within the first few minutes I’d girded my loins for the rest of the play, feeling, as Henry Franklin/son (Andrew Heringer) stated, “What an esoteric fuckhead” Daddy is.
Yet as the play progressed, I was drawn, and not so reluctantly, into the spiraling discourse of these characters’ lives, much helped along by the excellent craft of all the performers: Christa Mathis, playing both Julie/daughter and Claire/mother, and, in particular, Mercedes Manning playing Sparkles, excessively beloved family dog, as well as Vande Brake and Heringer, gave strong performances; and while there may have been a bit too much screaming throughout, what can one expect in a play about patriarchal devotion and betrayal, implied incest, and canine bestiality?
Reynolds managed to fully flesh—and fur—out a perversely dysfunctional dynamic in this diminished family, and all in a succinct 45 minutes. Not a small task for one so given to verbosity. And the dream sequences, accomplished on this absolutely bare stage through songs by Alan Terricciano and Reynolds (“The Long Island Song”) and Patrick Williams (“Silent Spring”), were almost magical (one small step from successfully delusional). Most impressive was the division between what was “real” and what was “remembered” or “imagined” throughout—using the imaginary division between front and back parts of the stage, the delimination of past and present was a spatial one that was both somewhat phenomenological (even, referencing Reynold’s bio, Deleuzian, if you will) and absolutely clarifying.
I wonder, if like a Webern concertino, this play might be better to experience two times, rather than one, in performance. Though I fear for the actors’ vocal cords, there was simultaneously too much and not enough to fully grasp in one viewing. Which says a lot, actually—I do love my Webern.
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