Another holiday auto-post!

Hi there!  I hope you're having a nice holiday, safe and warm and full of cheer.  I decided to do an auto-post of this review because the play I chat about is having a revival in 2019 and I'm very excited to see it.  Since I wrote this brief review, I've met the author and I've read a few of his other plays, not to mention that this particular play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  Not that it should sway my opinion, but he's a lovely person and lovely writer and I'm hoping this revival will remind theaters to produce his work.  And of course it sways my opinion because I'm me.

About that first sentence - I had seen a week's worth of plays that were (in my opinion) full of pretentious twaddle and I was a bit exasperated.  So I was happy to walk into the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre that night in 2007...

March 2007:  At last, a play ABOUT something!  Hooray!  I must admit I didn’t absolutely adore it because I don’t think it was entirely successful, but I was intrigued and engaged by it and have been thinking about it ever since.  Which is a very good thing.

Dying City begins with a woman packing boxes and she gets a surprise visit.  It turns out to be her dead husband’s twin brother.  The rest of the play is what happens during that visit, and we also see flashbacks to the last night they saw the dead man.

Pablo Schreiber plays both brothers.  I much prefer his portrayal of the brother-in-law rather than the dead husband.  I’m not sure what we gain from seeing the dead husband, other than an actor trick.  His scenes don’t add up to a whole lot, other than as a device.  At least that's how I felt about him.  But the brother-in-law, Peter, is an extremely intriguing character.  He’s passive-aggressive and masochistic, yet gentle and tormented.  It’s a very good performance and an interestingly written character.  

I wasn't as enamored of the actress playing the woman.  I found her performance entirely too technical—I felt I could see her acting gears moving from a mile away.  She is certainly an attractive and intelligent performer, and I'm sure I would like her in other things, but in this play, at least, I’d like to see her let loose and feel.  Of course, she IS playing a repressed woman, but I felt like the repression came from an overly controlled actor instead of the character.  I could, of course, be completely wrong.  I often am.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

There’s a lot going on in this play, about grief, abusive childhoods, violence (both internal and external), Iraq…but it doesn’t seem like it’s all thrown in for effect.  It all resonates together into a whirlwind about how these two people can move forward.  Or not.  

I think the play might’ve been better without seeing the character of the dead husband, but maybe not.  I guess that would've made it my play instead of Shinn's.  And I would’ve liked to have seen a more lived-in performance from the girl, but again that could just be my preference.  I give the show a thumbs-up, though, for presenting intelligent people engaging in intelligent discourse, but not showing off the writer’s vocabulary with pretentious twaddle.  

There is a scenic element, too, that was really cool.  I won’t say anything about it because you really have to see it for yourself.  But I thought it added a lot to the unsettling quality of what was happening in the script.  It rather sneaks up on you and then makes a pretty powerful statement.  You should definitely go check out this show and let me know when you noticed it...