Review: “In a Word”

Indescribable maternal grief caused by the loss of a child wrapped in absurdity and melancholy     

-       You don’t remember me, do you?

-       I’m sorry, should I?

-       Think I had your kid.

-       In class?

-       In captivity.

Just small talk with a twist at the supermarket. A horrible thing said in the friendliest way could be scary, hilarious, head spinning, disorienting or strangely fitting. In a Word by Lauren Yee is all of that. The playfulness with which she bends time, space and the language itself is beautifully embodied on the stage of the Cherry Lane Theatre, in the production by Lesser America.

Laura Ramadei, Justin Mark and Jose Joaquin Perez, In a Word, photo by Hunter Canning

Guy and Fiona lost their seven-year-old son, Tristan, two years ago. They are supposed to go out for dinner but Fiona keeps lingering and moving around boxes with newspaper cutouts in their obsessively organized living room. The sad anniversary seems to be a signal to move on for Guy (Jose Joaquin Perez) but Fiona (Laura Ramadei) is still in a state of shock, grasping for memories and trying to help the investigation. As the couple relives the day of their son’s disappearance, Fiona is desperately trying to connect the dots and get in touch with herself and reality.    

The only other actor in the cast, Justin Mark, plays Tristan as well at seven other parts, transitioning between them effortlessly. He is a kidnapper with a neatly staffed supermarket basket, buying a cantaloupe. Next second he is a missing persons detective offering Fiona a cut up cantaloupe that she just brought to the police as evidence. You better catch up quickly if you want to follow the stream of a devastated woman’s consciousness. While being imaginative and poetic, it has it’s own logic and is perfectly organized. But much like the set, designed by Oona Curley, Fiona’s memory has a lot of shelves and doors, the opening of which leads to the outpouring of clutter.

The absurdity of In a Word is just the right temperature, not too cold, not too hot and found its perfect match in the director Tyne Rafaeli. The mostly realistic acting might trick you into “living room drama” mode but the text pushes you out of the comfort zone again and again making you hover between compassion and curiosity. The play feels like ice-skating on the lake. It’s fun and exciting to experience the ways you can move around, yet when you think of the black void beneath you, you don’t feel as light any more. Imagine now, that the ice on the lake is semi-transparent and you can see the darkness of the water.

Fiona has been looking at this darkness for two years now, engulfed by guilt and self-doubt. Was she a good mother? Did she make adequate decisions while raising a difficult child? Was Tristan just restless or did he really need some special help? Yee puts her character in front of some really tough questions about parenthood, especially considering the tragic circumstances.

With loss comes the inability to put your grief into words. The words seem to fall down as leaves from the trees. Faithfull to their ornate shape and festive colors, they don’t have life in them anymore. At some point Fiona says: “In times like these, words fail me. Like, they just stop trying. Like, whatever they were doing before, they don’t now.” Luckily the words never fail Yee. And a wonderful cast never fails filling them with indescribable, unbearable and real emotions.          

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In a Word runs at Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, through July 8th. The running time is 80 minutes with no intermission. Performances Wednesday – Friday at 8pm and  Saturday at 3pm and 8pm. Tickets are $25, available at 212-352-3101 or  www.www.lesseramerica.com

In a Word is written by Lauren Yee. It is directed by Tyne Rafaeli, produced by Lesser America.

The production team includes Oona Curley (Scenic and Lighting Design), Andrea Hood (Costumes), Stowe Nelson (Sound Design).

The cast is Jose Joaquin Perez, Justin Mark and Laura Ramadei. 

Review: “(Not) Water”

An immersive meta-theatrical journey, which can appear shallow as a puddle or deep as an ocean, depending on how you look at it     

A sprinkle of water-related jokes, or the deep devastation of a girl sitting on the roof of her building after hurricane Katrina and watching a neighbor’s body float by? Not Sheila (April Matthis) and DT (Polly Lee), step in for co-creators of (Not) Water, and try do decide what is the best way to start their epic immersive play about the relationship between humans and the element. Matthis portrays the playwright Sheila Callaghan, and Lee plays the director Daniella Topol as they brainstorm the ideas, apply for residency at different theaters, and ideate with the team of designers.

Mike Shapiro, Rebecca Hart & Ethan Hova in Not Water, photo by Marina McClure

The audience, seated in a big circle, gets to witness creative and administrative processes acted out, as well as participate. From time to time a stagehand gives a random audience member a newspaper, from which they read out loud, usually news reports about natural disasters involving water. Not Sheila and DT feel the increasing pressure of responsibility for humanity but struggle to communicate their vast ideas to the creative team and the producer. They want their show to be “The conversation about water. The ways we control it. The ways it controls us”, and “How irresponsibly we treat it and how scared we are”, and also “Like Sleep No More but for the environment”. 

      

In a sense (Not) Water has all of that yet, at the same time, it never becomes the show that they describe. As Not Sheila and DT develop their project for almost a decade, we get to see an Irish girl at the bar during the storm, two Norwegian men drinking water on a boat, projected photographs of people in the flooded areas, and a singing mop floating in the air and more.

These “notes on water” are amusing at times but rather shallow. The ideas keep piling up but never quite develop. As the team tries to find the “tiniest myths”, and to fill them with ecological, political and cosmic discourse around water, I start to suspect that the piece is not about what they say it is and water is just a handle for the conversation, hence the “not” in the title. The further it goes the more it resembles a mockery of young creatives, taking upon themselves an ambition to revolutionize the theater and save the world.

The structure of (Not) Water gets complicated even further when the audience, divided in two groups, gets to see two solo shows running simultaneously in separate rooms. One story is told by a scientist who purifies water while the other one, which I saw, is about a crafty cook (Mike Shapiro) trying to avoid starvation by making tiny bites of cellulose and one other ingredient. To make them taste like food, the former dishwasher of a flooded restaurant created a scent of “mother’s pancakes”, which the volunteers can experience.    

It is difficult to sink into theatrical convention of perceiving the happening as if it could be real. I simply lost my appetite, my desire to listen to somebody else’s story, and to trust after other stories were unfolded in front of me and then dismissed by Not Sheila and DT.  

The meta-theatre prelude and a solo-show are followed by an art installation, which the audience members are encouraged to perceive lying down on inflatable mattresses. Above us is the hull of a boat in a sea of plastic bottles, and a projection resembling a water surface is dancing across celling. This meditative experience is reminiscent of Pipilotti Rist’s Pixel Forest, which was on view in the New Museum last fall.                

A divine, Siri-like voice of Water wakes you up. An aquarium filled with notes is passed around and each person fishes one out. Everybody was asked to write down their vivid memory of water upon entering the theater in the beginning, and now it’s time for them to be read. This is the warmest and most reassuring moment of the play. We leave with a notion that each of us is a storyteller and own “tiniest myth”.

As a show about the human relationship with the water, (Not) Water is all over the place, very ambitious but not satisfying. As the show about the theater and storytelling, it is actually brilliant. It starts with you writing down your personal story and sending it to the unknown, like a message in the bottle. Then you get to witness a chain of pathetic attempts of a writer and a director to create a narrative out of real life issues and events. After watching Not Sheila and DT struggle for a while, you realize that you can’t trust the character, even played by a talented actor, or the bodiless voice of an electronic ocean either.

When your own story, and the stories of other audience members are finally voiced, it truly feels like quenching your thirst. The theatrical evening makes a gigantic loop and brings you back to where you started, to your memory. Only now it’s not merely a herbarium memorabilia, but a seed that can grow into a story and only you can tell it. Just make sure to water it regularly.

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(Not) Water runs at the 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street, through June 30^th. The running time is approximately 100 minutes with no intermission. Performances are: Thu 6/22, Sat 6/24, Tue 6/27, Thu 6/29 & Fri 6/30 at 7:30pm; Tue 6/20, Wed 6/21 & Wed 6/28 at 8:30pm; Fri 6/23 at 9pm; Wed 6/14, Sun 6/18 & Fri 6/23; Sun 6/11 at 5pm; Sun 6/25 at 12:30pm. Tickets ($20-$45) and can be purchased at www.worksonwater.nyc or www.newgeorges.org.

(Not) Water is co-conceived by Sheila Callaghan and Daniella Topol, written by Sheila Callaghan. It is directed by Daniella Topol, produced by New Georges as part of Works On Water, a month-long, multidisciplinary art event that presents multiple artistic perspectives on water in a global context.  

The design team includes Deb O, Ari Fulton, Barbara Samuels, Broken Chord Collective, and Cory Einbinder, science dramaturgy by Guerilla Science.

The cast is Rebecca Hart, Carmen M. Herlihy, Ethan Hova, Polly Lee, April Matthis, and Mike Shapiro.