Review - Paris

Would that I had taken a trip to the real Paris (France), but no, I went with a handsome gentleman pal to see the new play with that delightful name at the Atlantic's smaller theater space.  We were intrigued by the description on the theater's website:  "Emmie is one of the only black people living in Paris, Vermont, and she desperately needs a job. When she is hired at Berry’s, a store off the interstate selling everything from baby carrots to lawnmowers, she begins to understand a new kind of isolation. A play about invisibility, being underpaid, and how it feels to work on your feet for ten hours a day."

Paris is indeed about all that, and more, and yet, somehow less.  I was frequently distracted during the play by my exceedingly uncomfortable seat (I began to worry about blood clots and DVTs/strokes), and maybe I wouldn't have been so distracted if the play had been more successful for me.  But moments, lines, characterizations are still sitting with me, so maybe there was more there than I saw at first glance...

photo credit: Ahron R. Foster

In the first scene, Paris introduces us to Berry's, a big box store (probably sort of like WalMart or Sam's Club), by showing us a training video that reminded me of the old Dharma Initiative videos on Lost.  It showed Berry's as a friendly, family-type company, that has no room for unions.  Unions=bad.  So you get an idea of the type of company we'll be seeing throughout the evening.  A young African-American woman, Emmie, is filling out paperwork and watching the video, then a young African-American man, Gar, comes in to finish the job interview.  Emmie gets the job, which pays $5/hour (the play is set in 1995, but still, yikes!), and she is thrilled.  But something seems unsettling somehow - she has a bandage on her cheek, from an accident at her other job, she says, but we wonder.  She has a wounded, shrinking demeanor, as if all she wants is to be invisible.  An understandable character trait, but at times I felt it was taken a little too far, because it felt difficult for me to engage with her or her situation.

We meet other Berry's workers throughout the play - an older woman, Wendy, who wants to be the peacemaker, but is also a day drinker; her husband, Dev, who is retired but now works as a traffic cop and is also pushing a get-rich-quick-pyramid-book-scheme-thing; Logan, a young would-be rapper; and Maxine, a frustrated and potty-mouthed mother of four.  All of these characters are white, as is a mysterious gentleman named Carlisle, who comes in for an unsettling scene about half way through the play.  I'll have a quirky story about his creepy scene later in my seat neighbor report.

photo credit: Caitlin Ochs

I could feel tension and menace throughout the play - when a character was told they should always carry a box cutter, I worried constantly (like when I worry about a gun on stage).  Clearly, there aren't many African-Americans in Paris, Vermont; every time Emmie mentions that she grew up there, the other characters said they had never seen her before.  There are other comments that are casually, yet insidiously, racist throughout.  These are also people who are in severe economic crisis and who count every penny; when their paychecks turn up short, they support each other in trying to get everything they deserve, but they also hold each other at arms length, because they're always looking out for themselves.  So I waited for the inevitable blowup, which I think might've happened off stage, oddly. The play has been directed at a steady, though sometimes slow, pace and frequently I felt as if the pace was slowed down for more menace, when all it really did was make the play slow.  I think there is a smart, incisive play in here somewhere about racism and poverty and the destruction of the working class in America, but I'm not sure I could find it in there.  Though the fear of DVT/stroke could've been clouding my judgement.

Seat neighbor-wise, the woman in front of me kept putting her hands out and motioning for things to hurry along, which was odd.  There were two women who decided to leave, and as they got ready to walk out the door, the creepy scene with Carlisle started by his coming in through that exit.  He sort of stared at the two women for a moment, then wandered into the play, and the two women were frozen at the door.  The audience tittered at them for probably too long; they stood there for probably too long as well, afraid that someone else would come in that door.  They finally left, thank heavens, but it was very strange.  I did wonder in that scene why Emmie stayed in the room with Carlisle.  I mean, if some weirdo walked into my office space and was completely weirdo, wouldn't I leave the room?  I don't know, that bothered me a bit, though if masochism or a victim mentality is part of Emmie's character makeup, that could've been played up a little more.

I thought the acting in Paris was very good and I look forward to seeing what this young playwright brings us next - hopefully, it will be in a theater with more comfortable seats and I can see the show she intended me to see.  But even with my quibbles during my viewing, I'm still thinking about and intrigued by the people and situations in Paris.  That's maybe good enough for now.