It’s Twilight Zone meets The
Matrix, with a passing nod to Pirandello and Sartre, in rogerandtom,
the smart, funny, and—in the end—surprisingly touching play by Julien Schwab,
now on view at the HERE Arts Center.
A sense of disorientation
begins to take hold while we await the start of the play. We begin to notice something odd and
dream-like about the set, very cleverly designed by David Esler. It is an apartment, but—as in a dream—parts
of the set are more-or-less realistic looking, while other parts are barely
sketched out. In the kitchen, for example, there is a smallish refrigerator,
but instead of a stove and sink, these are merely outlined on the floor. The bathroom has a sink and toilet, but also
an empty frame where a mirror would be. There
is a phone, but its wires dangle, obviously not connected to anything.
In addition, we are aware
that sitting opposite us on the other side of the set is the rest of the
audience. We are not looking over the
set, as would be the case with similar layouts at other venues, but through
it—which adds to the feeling that something not quite right is going on
here. Then we are plunged into darkness,
and bombarded with dissonant music, and the play begins.
rogerandtom is a like a funhouse
full of distorting mirrors, open to multiple perspectives and interpretations,
depending on which way you look at it. As
I sat watching this metaphysical tale unfold, I was reminded of something that
Professor Dumbledore says to Harry Potter in the final book in J. K. Rowling’s popular
series about the young wizard: “Of
course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that
it is not real.”
The gist of the plot is
this: Roger (Eric T. Miller) has come to
see a play that his brother Tom has written.
The brothers have been estranged for five years, and it is at the behest of
their sister Penny (Suzy Jane Hunt) that Roger has reluctantly agreed to show
up at all. The third character on the scene is Rich
(Richard Thieriot), Penny’s soon-to-be ex-husband.
Reality and the world of the
stage begin to merge almost from the outset, and the confluence of the two
never lets up. The fourth wall is
breached so many times, it becomes not just a stage device but a key aspect of
the play, adding that Twilight Zone/Matrix element and becoming—to at least one
of the characters—a source of sheer terror every time it happens.
But please don’t think of
rogerandtom as ponderous or headache-inducing.
It is very accessible, and often quite funny. While the plot continuously shifts gears, the
focus is always on the dramatis personae—the three characters, plus the actors
who play them, plus an unseen but often discussed omniscient playwright.
The play moves along at a
fast clip and runs but an hour, thanks to a playwright who is wise enough to know when to stop and a
production company, Personal Space Theatrics, that knows not to demand additional material to stretch the evening beyond the play's natural stopping point.
In the end, we are left with
a deeper appreciation for what Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously called “the willing
suspension of disbelief” and an understanding that we generally believe what we
choose to believe—something we cannot so easily walk away from, as the
characters in this play learn.
Much credit needs to go to
the director Nicholas Cotz, and to the splendid cast. Mr. Thieriot and Ms. Hunt do a wonderful job of shifting constantly
between playing actors and playing the characters they portray (“we’re works of
art, not artists,” is how Mr. Thierot puts it). And Mr. Miller is excellent as the bemused stand-in
for the audience, both disturbed by and caught up in the action.
All in all, rogerandtom is an
original and solid work, and Mr. Schwab shows himself to be a playwright to be reckoned
with.
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