I don't know what's taken me so long to get to The Other Place at Manhattan Theatre Club. I'm a big fan of Laurie Metcalf and I'm a big fan of new plays. But, for some reason, I dragged my feet. Well, one of the reasons is it was rarely on TDF. I'm all about ticket discounts. When the play showed up on TDF for last night, I pounced. And, boy, am I glad I did. I may have to pounce again before the show closes in a couple of weeks.
On the surface, Sharr White's play could seem to be a disease-of-the-week event, but it's so much more than that. It's almost a puzzle, moving back and forth, in real time and imagined time, so that what we're experiencing is almost like the fragmenting in the brain of our main character. Laurie Metcalf is on stage the entire evening as Juliana, a medical researcher who has turned to giving sales pitches to doctors to peddle a new drug that battles dementia. I guess it's not a spoiler to say that the drug will perhaps come into play further down the line.
Describing the rest of the plot could become a spoiler. Much of what unfolds are the aftershocks of the 'episode' Juliana suffers during her opening sales pitch. She's speaking to doctors at a conference in St. Thomas and becomes fixated on a girl in the room wearing a yellow bikini. The things that go through her mind, and ours, regarding that girl begin the unraveling of the events. There's a long pause during her speech and we all wonder did she have a stroke? What's going on? Juliana becomes certain she has a brain tumor after the 'episode' and takes action accordingly. But, as the play progresses, Juliana is often the narrator of a scene, although she becomes an unreliable narrator. Can we believe her? What's real and what isn't? Her perspective on events doesn't align with the other characters, so the audience is also in a state of befuddlement that mirrors her confusion.
Laurie Metcalf is nothing short of incredible. This character easily could've been a huge turn-off, because of her rather bitchy demeanor and her decline into a nasty, surly woman who refuses to acknowledge her disease. Somehow, Metcalf gets us on her side. This supersmart, supersuccessful woman isn't as smart or successful as she seems. She has done terrible things, but now terrible things are being done to her. My heart really ached for her. Her regret and pathological need for forgiveness was so raw, but so recognizable. The twists and turns in the script made me feel as if I were off-balance throughout the play, but Metcalf was never anything but completely real, and kept showing so many layers. She was almost like a kaleidoscope. Turn one way and Juliana looked/acted like this. But turn it another way and everything changed. Just masterful.
The rest of the cast is also terrific - I loved Bill Pullman as her exasperated husband, who may, or may not, be the villain Juliana describes. I am a little sad that I missed seeing Daniel Stern in the role, because I enjoy him, but Pullman really captured the frustrated love in this man and his fear of what will happen to him during his wife's possible disintegration. He also fully realized the dimensions of a man who was probably tired of being the peacekeeper and the warm fuzzy one in the relationship. Good good stuff. John Schiappa is good in his few scenes and Zoe Perry is wonderful as several characters. Her work in the penultimate scene of the play was amazing. She had to really go through the wringer in the scene and play a huge range of emotions. Plus, her rapport with Metcalf (her real-life mother) was extraordinary. I will admit that through most of the play I was happily engaged intellectually, but in that scene, finally, I was hit in the gut emotionally. I was just sobbing at the depths the playwright found, and how the actors dived into those depths. Really beautiful work. I will say that I found the last scene to be a little too pat and 'full circle,' though the final image was heartbreaking and I did not see it coming, though I probably should have. Clearly, I really really enjoyed The Other Place.
Having said all that, I was sitting in the last row of the house, on the left side. That was not a good seat to experience much of the play, but most especially that penultimate scene. The scene was staged so that Metcalf played most of it seated with her back to me. I felt cheated that I didn't get to experience her facial expressions throughout. And the set design didn't really help either. Intellectually, I think I understand what the design was going for, but it just seemed to get in the way, at least from the last row of the house.
Seat neighbor-wise, the gent on one side of me had on entirely too much cologne, blech, and the gent on the other side of me was a little odd. The first thing I heard him say was "Bill Pullman is in this? What is he doing in this? He's a MOVIE STAR! And he gets second billing??" Um, ok. Then he started going on about the set (which generally never ends well, though I did ultimately agree with him). After the play, he said, quite loudly, "I thought this was supposed to be a new play! I know I've seen this on HBO!" So I don't know if he was commenting on originality, the subject matter or the actual play. I just rather wanted to get away from him.
The two girls in front of us arrived about ten minutes into the show (it's a lean 80 minutes), then the one with the clangy bracelets got right back up and left. She came back in maybe five minutes later and stood to wave to people down a few rows. They were distracting to say the least. They probably didn't help with my dissatisfaction with my seat location, though it's to the play's and the actors' credit that those annoying gals (who kept their phones on) didn't distract me so much that I was completely taken out of the play. Oh, and the final straw, was when I got downstairs. I was quickly out of my seat and down the stairs to get away from the cologne, but I was struggling to get my coat on. So I pulled over when I got to the main floor to finish putting my coat on. An MTC staffer says to me, quite snottily, "Miss, you can't stand there! I'm expecting about 30 people to get in line!" OK, so I landed in front of the assisted hearing device station. But I was clearly putting my coat on and just paused while still in motion. I really resented her huffy tone and she nearly ruined my evening by putting a snotty button on the experience. If she had been polite, I would've smiled and moved on. I must admit, I glared. She looked a little scared. Sorry, rude MTC girl. Sigh. I guess when you get a nicely discounted TDF ticket, you shouldn't really complain, but, well, I'm a complainer. What can I say?
On my way to the subway, I passed a marquee for a show I'm dying to see. Fingers crossed I don't wait too long to see it... 
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