Review - Her Requiem

For some reason, I always wait too long to order tickets to LCT3 productions and then they sell out, probably mainly because the tickets are so inexpensive, but also because the plays are by young-ish and up-and-coming writers.  People like to claim to be the first to see "the next big thing."  When LCT3 announced Her Requiem, by Greg Pierce, I ordered a ticket right away.  I saw his Slowgirl at this same theater a few years ago and really enjoyed it (that review is HERE), so I knew I wanted to see his new play.  I haven't seen much press about this play, not sure why, and the theater wasn't full last night.  Not sure about that, either.  Oh well.  It's other people's loss.  I enjoyed myself quite a bit, though, to be honest, I may have enjoyed Slowgirl more.  But just a bit.  I'll try to avoid spoilers below...

Her Requiem takes place in a seemingly remote farmhouse, very attractively decorated by set designer Derek McLane.  There was a lot of hunting and shooting paraphernalia all over the walls, so I did have a feeling of dread that someone was going to get it before the evening was over.  Have you ever seen Sleuth?  That's what the set reminded me of.  Moving on.  The play opens with an older woman asleep on the couch and a middle-aged couple playing backgammon.  Their conversation was easy, authentic, very rich and true, though I admit to feeling some annoyance at how Dean (played by Peter Friedman) tried to impress everyone (including, it seemed, the audience) with his huge vocabulary and enormous breadth of knowledge.  As the play went on, this was a very telling character trait and one that was completely indispensable, so I wasn't annoyed anymore.  I'll be coming back to it later.

photo credit: Jeremy Daniel

As Dean and Allison (played by the always wonderful Mare Winningham) are playing backgammon, they're discussing their teenage daughter, Caitlin, who has apparently taken off from her senior year of high school to sequester herself in their home to write a requiem.  Allison is confused by the whole thing and isn't sure it's such a good idea to let her daughter spend so much time alone, writing 'death' music.  She even asks, "Who died?"  (I paraphrase)  Though, in actuality, Caitlin isn't always alone - her composition teacher, Tommy, does work with her and reports her progress to her parents.

As the play goes on and we only hear about Caitlin and her requiem's progress through Tommy, we get a strange feeling of foreboding.  At least I did.  He describes her work as "miraculous."  I began to wonder if we would ever see the character of Caitlin (I didn't look at the playbill beforehand) and I began to debate in my head whether or not I wanted to see her.  The ideas we were hearing about music, the power of art, and how it affects everyone around an artist, were very intriguing to me.  Plus, the idea of cult and mythos overshadowing actual creation, seemed very relevant as well.  Dean, who has been a sort-of genius/failure his whole life, becomes completely obsessed with the idea that his daughter could be writing something of worth, and Tommy plays on Dean's emotions perfectly.  Dean is an obsessive, about everything; he researches compulsively, learning everything he can about something, yet never attempting to DO that something himself.  He carries note cards around with him and whenever something strikes his fancy, he writes it down and researches it.  As part of Caitlin's high school work, to compensate for her not being in class, she is supposed to write a blog about the experience of writing a requiem.  Dean takes over that task, writing what he thinks Caitlin would say - I think we can tell that's going to go badly.  Everyone interprets art differently, yes?  So no matter what Caitlin thinks she is trying to accomplish with her requiem, other people are going to get different things out of it.  The 'the planet is dying' interpretation of Dean's attracts people across the internet who happen upon Caitlin's blog.  Suddenly, people begin to congregate at her home, waiting to be touched by her genius and her music.

Allison has remained skeptical and unsure the whole time.  She isn't sure she should be encouraging, or at least tacitly supporting, all of the obsessiveness about Caitlin's music, and she becomes more and more troubled as she slips farther and farther away from her daughter and from her husband.  She's unhappy about Tommy spending so much time alone with Caitlin in her bedroom.  She doesn't want 'followers' staying on her property.  There's also a subplot about Allison's mother experiencing dementia and having to be placed in a facility, adding to Allison's unhappiness, but it's also kind of thrown in and doesn't do much to advance the story.  At least it didn't for me.

photo credit: Jeremy Daniel

Another character in the story is Mertis, one of the 'followers' of Caitlin's requiem who connected with Dean via the blog.  Mertis is a goth, who becomes the sort of liaison between the 'followers' and Caitlin's family.  Mertis is a terrific character - she could easily have become a stereotype of a wacky goth, but she has so many facets and shades, she was always surprising to me.  Her character was also quite moving.  Although, I guess it was a little bit stereotypical that Mertis turns out to be the voice of reason, but I bought it.

I don't think I want to say much more without spoiling any of the interesting plot twists.  I will say that we do eventually meet Caitlin and I'm not sure we needed to.  I'm trying to piece that together in my brain.  I've also been trying to figure out if the script mirrors an actual requiem (Wikipedia research is not really helping me).  I should've seen at least one of the plot twists coming, and I didn't, and I feel more mad about missing it than happy it surprised me.  I'm still trying to piece that emotion out, too.  I will say that I was also completely engaged in what was going on; I loved the story, I thought the dialogue was smart and interesting, I thought the characterizations were sharp and individual and I thought all of the acting was first-rate.  I was very impressed with all of the ideas in Her Requiem, even if it didn't completely come together for me as a total play package.  But this morning, when I realized whose death the requiem was written for (well, who I think it was written for), I was quite breathless.  Why I didn't see it last night is another question...