Review: "Better"

A new play about a substance abuse clinic straddles traditional and interactive theatre but lacks energy

What is something you are good at?

What is the behavior you would like to change?

Who do you turn to for help?

These are some of the items on the questionnaire the audience members of Better need to fill out before they enter the premises of the New Beginnings Clinic. The interactive play by Daniel Irving Rattner transforms The Studio Theater at Columbia University into a substance abuse rehab facility, with between fourteen and twenty audience members being either patients or volunteers.

Cast and participants of Better.

We are welcomed to the rehab center by one of the staff members, Jane (Lina Sarrello), and offered to take a seat in a circle. We’re in a spacious basement studio with a grey linoleum floor and a low ceiling. After randomly assigning the roles in the discussion (leader, rule enforcer, time keeper, and a bunch of participants), Jane offers a quote to reflect upon: “To progress means to always start again.” As the exercise continues, the latecomer Amanda (Bri Ellison) arrives. She grabs a chair and drags it into the circle, deliberately and loudly. Another guy from the group, Carver (Bryan Kelly) immediately gets into a quarrel with her.

This is not the first time that those two have clashed in the clinic. They seem to know each other well. Carver hides his insecurity behind a cynical façade. He isn’t afraid to contradict but seems to be doing so only out of the desire to strike a conversation in order to connect with someone. Amanda is irritated and seems to be hanging onto a last strand of hope, this dream of a paradise-like environment which can cure her addiction. Citing the infamous Rat Park study from the 70s, she aggressively inquires about the efficiency of the methods in the center. The younger staffer Marielle (Savannah Hankinson) gets emotionally invested in her despite the cautionary advice from Jane to not get too close. (Jane is a senior staff member who wants to do everything by the book, but as with other characters, we don’t know much about her.)           

The audience members get caught up in between patients/staff conflict, mostly as silent witnesses. There is some agency assigned to the audience members but Better is not a LARP, so role-playing is not intended, yet we are assigned to be a “patient” or a “volunteer” from the beginning. An abstract outline of my “role” didn’t bother me when the spotlight was on Amanda. But occasionally I found myself trapped in a limbo of half-defined roleplaying, particularly during interactions where audience members are paired off: one patient and one volunteer each. In one of these scenes, each duo is given a task revolving around cozying up the space. Somebody unpacks the mugs stored away after the recent flood. Somebody else marks the calendar with everybody’s birthdays. Max, my partner, and I are copying a day schedule onto a poster. “So who do you know here?”  asks Max and it takes me a few seconds to assess if he is asking from “within” the world of the play or if he’s asking if I know the creative team behind Better. After an awkward clarification, we decide that since we were instructed to share our real personal information on the questionnaire, we are probably just playing ourselves in this scenario.

Our conversation then ventures into a discussion about plays and immersive theatre, which I love doing anywhere except during an immersive show; it kind of takes you out of that world. I found the people around me struggling with the same problem. Some of them were trying to make small talk around the assigned activity, but there is only so much you can say to each other when arranging Polaroids of the clinic inhabitants on the wall.

The staff had carefully ensured that all participants were engaged in decorating the room at the beginning of the show, and setting the room up for playing games later. Engaging audience members into any sort of physical activity is a great theatrical device for making them a part of the world. Besides, since we invested effort into “decorating,” we are likely to feel more connected to the surroundings. Being forced gently into doing a seemingly unnecessary activity reminded me of my place as an inferior within the system in Better. It felt like being back in kindergarten: where the teachers make sure that kids are busy with activities and nobody wanders off or daydreams too much. I imagine this what some patients of rehabs might feel like.   Coffee and Girl Scout cookies also appeared at some point, contributing to the atmosphere of a group therapy facility even more.

Despite a little uncertainty in the beginning, I enjoyed the mutual activities and getting to know the patient who was assigned to me. Later, during our stay in the facility, I got to interview Max about his strengths and areas that he is trying to perfect, looping us back to the original questionnaire. One-on-one heartfelt conversations never fail to engage most people, and, frankly, Max’s real-life story was far more appealing to me than Amanda’s fictionalized drama. Unfortunately, for better or worse, Better steered us away from any personal connections established between the audience members and towards the overarching conflict between Amanda and the center’s staff.          

These conversations and shared activities were useful in bringing the audience members together; a bond that was solidified during what came next: a physical group game. One person sat on a chair blindfolded. There were keys placed underneath the chair. A volunteer from the audience needed to snatch the keys away from the chair before the person sitting on the chair could hear him and point in the direction of the thief. During the game as well as during most of the show, the audience members can set a bar of participation low, which is good news for the introverts. Except communicating in our patient/volunteer pairs one can choose to be quiet the entire time and will only be moved but a few times.

Better found a fine balance between audience participation and silent observation, but despite the initial confusion about the nature of my persona within the context of the show, I enjoyed the interactive parts more. I felt the plotline centered around Amanda was superficial, and lacking memorable details. The sensitive and potent topic of substance abuse, healing, and relapse could have been explored further. The stakes are just too low in the current iteration of Better. And in the current production, the performances ranged between over-performing (Hankinson) and playing it too casual (Ellison). A deeper exploration of the topic would also help the actors to find firmer ground in the interactive format.

Better is more contemplative than it is emotional and it seems to be preoccupied with form more than with content. The form is in good shape, now it is a matter of building up the emotional substance. The elegant circular narrative structure of the show was elevated by the ending, which tied together the experience in an intellectually satisfying way. By pure chance, Better ended on a perfect story interrupted at the perfectly right moment.  

We were offered to voice an opinion as a part of the group therapy for the last time and one of the audience members shared his recent experience as an English teacher. When he had ten minutes left of class after discussing students’ essays, he offered to put their pieces aside and to start writing them completely from scratch. But the timer in the hands of the timekeeper went off, so we never found out what the teacher took from his experiment. It might be an interesting exercise for the creators of Better to try this approach in order to see what’s important and what’s lacking, in a new light. To begin again doesn’t mean starting from scratch, but to evaluate your past with a critical eye, in order to progress in the future.   

(This review was published on NoProscenium.com on 3.14.19)