Review: “The Providence of the Neighboring Bodies”, make Rhode Island great again

In North Providence, Rhode Island, the smallest town in the smallest state with the biggest number of nail salons per capita, life is happy and slow. It’s Saturday morning and Dora (Lori Elizabeth Parquet) is going through her morning routine, excited about befriending Ronnie, an English School teacher from the apartment next door.

Or should I say is “obsessed” with the idea of befriending her neighbor, because “excited” doesn’t fully convey the creepiness of the cute but slightly maniacal smiles and the devilish spark in her eyes when she is preparing coffee for two, ready to “accidentally” meet her crush on the adjoining balcony.

photo by AlleyScott

We meet Ronnie (Amy Staats), busy taking a perfect picture of the daises in the Mason jar for her couch surfing listing. The shy schoolteacher with social anxiety issues and sweaty glasses is eager to make new friends too. Soon providence will send her Jane (Dinah Berkley), a neat and polite couch surfer with only one characteristic that some people in this town consider scandalous: Jane is a beaver.       

“The Providence of the Neighboring Bodies”, written by Jean Ann Douglass, and directed by Jess Chayes, mostly consists of monologues of the characters, resembling diary entries. The writing of Douglass is light and enjoyable, full of elegant absurdity and poetry of everyday life. Chayes directs the actresses to speak while mostly facing the audience, which inevitably elicits trust and sympathy for the heroines. As they are trying to bond with each other, reaching out trough the weeds of worry and the hustle and bustle over small things, they sadly miss the bigger picture. Unfortunately, the play ends abruptly, leaving the audience hungry for at least a couple more scenes.

Ann Douglass states in her playwright’s note in the program that Rhode Island, in 1950-1970, “successfully eradicated the beaver within its borders” because they used to cause flooding of low-lying lands, preventing housing being built. I can’t be sure if the ecological situation is indeed the play’s premise, or if it is just another layer of absurdity masking the social injustice aimed towards “the other”. It might as well have been written keeping the decline of the beaver population in Rhode Island in mind, but the show landed right on the timely topic of “weeding out” the human population of the entire country.       

“The Providence of the Neighboring Bodies” runs through March 11^th in Theater 511 located at 511 West 54^th Street, New York. Tickets start at $20 and can be purchased online. You can find more information about the show on the Dutch Kills Theater’s website: dutchkillstheater.com.