Another Reviewing Dilemma

So, last night I went to my favorite spot, the Signature Theatre, and saw a new American play by a female playwright.  As I am frequently wont to do.  And I found the play's subject matter so distasteful that I wonder if I should even talk about it.  I wonder if I can separate my taste from my feeling that all theater is worthwhile, at least to someone.  I still don't know, but I think I need to get it out of my head...

(Spoilers will abound, because if I'm going to talk about 'distasteful subject matter', I can't be coy and not say what it is.  At least I don't think I should.  So if you're planning on seeing the show, please just close this blog post up right now.)  I've seen three plays by this particular playwright and found all of them intriguing, if not completely satisfying for me.  I love her use of heightened language and big ideas.  I love her telling of stories I know nothing about.  I love her toughness and unwillingness to compromise.  I love that she normally writes about women without power because those are the characters who most need dramatizing.  But I just can't wrap my brain around last night's performance of Night is a Room.  It's still in previews, so I'll just talk about my problems and some of the issues in the play.

After reading the blurb on Signature's website, I bought a $25 ticket, because I love Signature, because I thought the blurb made the play sound intriguing and because I am a big fan of each cast member (I've already shared my intrigue with the playwright).  Here's the blurb:  "Liana and Marcus have a marriage others envy. Dore has grown accustomed to an isolated existence in her modest flat. After a surprise reunion on Marcus’s 40th birthday, their worlds are shattered by an unexpected turn of events. A world premiere production from Residency One playwright Naomi Wallace, Night is a Room is a searing exploration of love’s power to both ruin and remake our lives."

There are, I guess, many reasons why I didn't quite go to the place the play actually went.  In the first scene, we meet two women, one older, one younger.  The women are awkward with each other, indicating this is a first meeting.  We come to realize that the older woman, Dore, is the birth mother of the younger woman's husband.  The younger woman, Liana, is trying to arrange a meeting between her husband and his birth mother, who have not met before.  Liana figures that her husband's 40th birthday is the perfect time to surprise him with this 'gift.' 

So, already, my brain is thinking, hm, I probably won't enjoy this.  There are some stories that are so emotional to me, I can't think about them rationally in a theatrical way.  I can never see Rabbit Hole, Frozen (the play), Pillowman, or any number of plays that have subject matter that takes me out of the play because I respond too strongly emotionally.  And, if I had done more research about Night is a Room, I may have skipped it, too, just based on that first scene.  Of course, as the play continued, it got harder and harder for me to remain onboard.

a poem in the theater lobby

The second scene was in the home of Liana and her husband, Marcus.  They have a relatively graphic sexual scene, after which we discover that Marcus has been visiting his birth mother for about three weeks after that first meeting.  Dore is on her way over to the house for a visit.  Once she arrives, the air is just filled with tension and barely suppressed resentment, when suddenly Dore drops a bombshell: Marcus (who she calls Jonathan, because that's the name she gave him at his birth) will be leaving with her today and never coming back to his home with Liana.  I was confused - why would a grown man want to go live with his mother?  It took me longer than it took the character of Liana to understand that Marcus/Jonathan was going to LIVE with his mother.  That they were involved with each other, sexually, and wanted to be together.  OK.  Now, my brain immediately turned off.  That is just someplace I do.not.want.to.go.  This is apparently a real phenomenon that happens sometimes when children meet their biological family after a long time, which I didn't know and didn't need to know.  I think the playwright acknowledges that this is somewhere NO ONE wants to go, so she has tried to make the play a sort of dark comedy, with uncomfortably funny lines to head off the distaste.  There are arguments, ugly things are said, and the act ends with Marcus/Jonathan walking out to his new life with Dore.

When the lights came up, I think we all sat there kind of stunned.  The entire row to my left exited the theater, not to return.  The people behind me thought it was brilliant.  I was just gobsmacked.  I texted a friend who had seen a dress rehearsal and understood why he hadn't told me anything about it beforehand.  I was sitting next to the director and two rows in front of the playwright, so I didn't think I could leave.  I don't leave shows at intermission lightly.  Plus, I'll admit that I thought to myself, wow, I maybe kind of need to see how she makes this turn out!  And there was enough of that heightened language and big idea storytelling, plus, hello, I've never heard THIS story before (yes, I know Oedipus and this was something totally different) that made me hesitate to leave.  So I stayed for the second act.

The second act is much shorter and deals with the aftermath of what happened.  It's only one scene, and it only deals with Liana and Dore.   As repulsive as I found the idea in the first act, that act was more successful dramatically than the second.  For me, anyway.  The payoff (if you can call it that) just was so out in left field that I was left shaking my head.  And some of the staging and action was simply revolting.  So there's that.  But, again, when the play was over, there were people standing, others were quite moved.  Honestly, it's really and truly a thrill to me how different plays can touch everyone differently.  This one surely didn't touch me, unfortunately.  Or fortunately, as the case may be.  In my last two reviews of this playwright's work, I've said that I wasn't quite sure I liked her plays, but I was intrigued enough to keep trying.  I'm thinking that this may be my last one.  I don't think we're simpatico, which is totally on me and not on her.  Just because I find a play distasteful in the extreme doesn't mean it doesn't have craft or worth.  I did see betrayal and forgiveness buried in the play, which could've touched me somewhere, but didn't.  It's not that I don't want to be disturbed in the theater, I find terrifying or horrible or scary to be quite theatrically exciting sometimes.  But a story like this is just...no.  And I'm guessing I'll never really be on board with her work again.  Which, again, will probably be my loss and not hers.  At least I'll remember this play for a long time to come...