Palm Beach Dramaworks Production of 'The Humans' Captures the Angst of Our Times

 

Stephen Karam’s ‘The Humans’ is a gripping 90 plus minute exploration of the existential post 9/11 dread of the 21^st century, the equivocality of the human condition, touching the tenuousness and tenderness of family ties. While it has many humorous moments, this production is both profoundly philosophical and deeply human. Director J. Barry Lewis and the PBD ensemble of actors and technicians make this a memorable theater experience.

 

It takes place in real time, at a family Thanksgiving dinner in a rundown basement duplex in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Parents of the Blake family, Eric and Deidre, drove from blue-collar Scranton, PA, with Eric’s 79-year-old mother, “Momo” who suffers from dementia, to the “new” apartment of their younger daughter, Brigid, and her partner, Richard.  Also attending is their older daughter, Aimee. 

 

The dinner begins pleasantly with light family banter until emotions begin to ebb and flow, becoming a cauldron of confrontations and hurts, revealing well-worn family pressure points and secrets.  These are “the humans” who are trapped in conflict with external forces and within the family structure.  Their interactions, punctuated by wit and pathos, reveal layers of disappointment and anxiety: families know how to push emotional buttons. Strange sounds emanating from the building are foreboding, the gloomy apartment another character in the play. 

 

Each character in this Chekhovian gem of heightened realism reflects one or more of the play’s themes.  The cast’s chemistry makes their interaction feel authentic and deeply connected.

 

Laurie Tanner, Andy Prosky, Anne-Marie Cusson, Lindsey Corey, Casey Sacco, and Daniel Kublick. Photo by Jason Nuttle

Andy Prosky (PBD debut) is Erik Blake, the family’s patriarch, now mired in a middle-class financial crisis, having recently lost his job as a school custodian. Anxiety, regret and guilt hang heavily in Prosky’s performance.  Brigid now lives near ground zero after 9/11 which has heightened his concern for his daughters’ welfare.  He also has issues which threaten his marriage and his very dignity while fears of mortality and nightmares stalk him.  Prosky’s interpretation deeply resounds:  pensive, anxious, he looks off in the distance asking, “don’t you think it should cost less to stay alive?” His troubles and morally ambiguous nature make him a classic antihero. His is truly a bravura performance.

 

His wife, Deirdre Blake, is equally hauntingly played by Anne-Marie Cusson. Her long suffering as a wife prevails in her performance, as well as her Catholic upbringing and traditional values, frequently putting her at odds with her daughters. Religion and marriage are at the core of her beliefs, lacking in both her daughters.  Even when not talking, her knowing looks are both sad and comic.

 

Laurie Tanner (PBD debut) portrays Fiona “Momo” Blake, Eric’s mother, suffering from dementia.  Most of her dialogue is monosyllabic gibberish, but with occasional breakthroughs of clarity such as this brief monologue which could describe all the characters in the play and has Theatre of the Absurd insight:  “where do we go? Where, where do we go? Where do we go? Where do we go? Where do we go? Where do we go? Where do we go?“  Tanner’s is a mostly sad visage, but she explodes into the play’s resolution. The rhythm of her language has allegorical meaning as do the non-sequiturs.

 

Casey Sacco plays Brigid, the younger daughter who is hosting the dinner. She takes pleasure in playing this adult role for her family and yet reveals her profound disappointment as a marginalized millennial. She aspires to be a musician but is bartending. Yet Sacco tries to show her character’s brave positivity as being the “new adult” in the family, even her excitement about having a large window upstairs, although it looks down at an enclosed backyard dump.  Her depression about her career is countered by Eric’s impassioned plea that she display the “Blake bounce back” as if it was only so simple.

 

She tries to distance herself from her parents’ values, living with, but not yet married to Richard Saad, twelve years her senior, played with concerned likability by Daniel Kublick (PBD debut). While he has a disturbing dream world in common with Eric, the comparison stops there as his demeanor is calmer, analytical, and as he is from a family of privilege, symbolizing the financial disparities between classes.  Richard effectively keeps the flow of the dinner when he senses the family is off track.  Whereas Erik is lost in the sea of stress, Richard advocates coping strategies although one can see from Saad’s mannerisms and glances that he is still struggling to find purpose. 

 

Lindsey Corey’s performance as Brigid’s older sister, Aimee, is heartbreaking, negotiating many life changes, all negative. She suffers from ulcerative colitis, with the anxiety of its economic impact, and loneliness, longing for her former female partner.  Her position as an attorney is soon to be terminated; even the highly educated are subject to the precariousness of professional life.  Ironically only Deidre is fully employed, as an office manager, but underpaid and underappreciated. 

 

All these humans are in the same boat of life’s fragility, both literally and philosophically.  If the Theater of the Absurd sought to reveal the absurdity of existence, ‘The Humans’ looks at the condition from the vantage of the everyday lives we lead. 

 

By the time the toasts around the dinner table take place (a family tradition under the amusing rubric of “Smashing the Pig”), emotions escalate, from Richard’s that he is joining a new family, to Eric’s thanks for unconditional family love, and then a change of tone: Brigid blurting out that she wants to be cremated when she dies, to Deidre’s expression of religious horror at that thought, to Brigid’s rejoinder that no one in the family can handle honesty.  But Aimee contradicts that by speaking honestly “in a year where – I lost my job, my girlfriend, and I’m bleeding internally… really a banner year… I’m thankful for what’s right, okay? I love that in times like this I have a home base, a family I can always come home to.”

 

The dinner culminates in a reading of an email Momo wrote to her granddaughters when she was first diagnosed with her illness four years before, a tear jerking monologue read aloud by Deidre.  Then Director J Barry Lewis introduces a long silence to let this sink in with the family and the extended family of the audience.  Soon afterwards, Deidre breaks down in silence, solitary on stage, Cusson’s sadness palpable. 

 

From there the play’s context shifts to the cosmic nature of the human dilemma, the ominous sounds escalating as the lighting fades with Erik’s motions and interrupted monologue resembling his nightmares of faceless figures in a tunnel, expressing his guilt and fear of irrelevance -- until complete darkness settles like the black hole of a quasar.

 

Director J. Barry Lewis orchestrated a dynamite cast in developing this play, taking it from its realistic roots into the uncertainty of absurd theatre. He skillfully meets the challenge of directing actors in multiple stage locations sometimes engaged in separate discussions; it is purposely disquieting, the tension building until finally released in a sense of bewilderment. We recognize the characters as ourselves.

 

The scenic design of the two-story duplex with a spiral staircase is by Anne Mundell, a tour de force, squeezing the second level onto the compromised PBD stage.  The monotone set captures the grunge of a NYC basement apartment in a turn of the century building with exposed pipes, electric meter and circuit breaker, a worn kitchen, stage left.  It is in just moved in condition, with mismatched folding bridge tables, open unpacked cartons, paper plates and cups at dinner, a perfect setting for the themes of this play.  Although it is dark and dank place, it is not inhabited by ghosts, except the ones trapped in the characters.

 

Brian O’Keefe’s costume design is another sign of the random nature of life. What would these people wear getting together for this particular Thanksgiving meal, a happenstance that one gets the sense will not be repeated?  No costume changes required; only our attention to real life characters in a realistic play.  

 

Lighting design by Kirk Bookman had to cope with the two-level set and the anomaly of tired light bulbs in the apartment slowly popping off and the fading light at the conclusion.  The lighting hones in on Eric’s tunnel dreams as an ambiguous denouement develops.

 

Roger Arnold’s sound design includes the jarring sounds from the old building, a sudden thud from the apartment above, the banging pipes, the trash compactor; the groans build as the play evolves. These sounds are especially grating to Eric, the character most vulnerable to paralyzing unease. He has an immediate, instinctive, reaction to them as a perceived threat in his state of anxiety.  There is deep rumble as the play opens, that thud from upstairs, a flushing toilet. Frequent overlapping dialogue is a sound challenge successfully addressed by the designer.  There is the obligatory barking dog but no outside noise of the city.

 

'The Humans' is another great play selection by Palm Beach Dramaworks and its execution flawless, capturing the temper of the times.  Emphatically, this is theatre to think about.

 

Behind the Curtain: Palm Beach Dramaworks Unveils a Stunning Production of ‘The Dresser’

 

 

The community of theatre is unlike any other, a close-knit group of people sharing experiences and sensibilities, often under duress.  Palm Beach Dramaworks stages Ronald Harwood’s homage to the world of theatre with a heartrending and compelling reprise of ‘The Dresser’ to celebrate PBD’s 25^th anniversary.  Although written more than forty years ago, it has an eerie relevancy to today’s sense of things coming apart at the seams, the very ethos of civilization hanging by a thread. 

 

It takes place during the chaos and constantly threatening carnage of WW II where the tatterdemalion British Shakespeare Company is touring the provinces of England, its productions deteriorating, worn down by time and the loss of cast members due to the war.  Its aging and mentally and physically ailing actor/manager, “Sir” is propped up by his long suffering but dedicated dresser of sixteen years, Norman.  It is a symbiotic relationship, Sir, unable to function without his man servant and gatekeeper, and Norman finding purpose to living in that role when in fact he has no friends, is a closet gay man, who gets through the day with a frequent nip of brandy, slowly leading him into drunkenness.

 

Colin McPhillamy, William Hayes

They are not putting on just any Shakespearean play, but King Lear requiring all the energy Sir can muster with the help of Norman.  Backstage is Sir’s kingdom, where he expects adoration and obedience, those qualities hardly ever reciprocated. 

 

But while Lear is tragedy on a grand scale, ‘The Dresser’ is a microcosm of human tragedy within the terrarium of the actor’s backstage world.  Its themes though mirror those of King Lear’s, aging and vulnerability, and loyalty and betrayal. 

 

Sir is played by larger than life Colin McPhillamy inhabiting the character he is preparing to play while unwittingly living out his own version of the tragedy.  As in Lear, Sir is bewildered and fearful that he is losing his mind, the strength of his long gone youth, and erosion of authority; yet he is still capable of bursting into sieges of rage.  He occasionally thinks of the audience as “swine” although their approbation is imperative to him.  McPhillamy agonizingly vacillates between those highs and lows.

 

Dennis Creaghan, William Hayes, Denise Cormier, David Hyland, Kelly Gibson, Collin McPhillamy

We feel his fear of failure and then his vast courage of going out on stage for this his 227^th performance of Lear, while having to deal with bombs of the blitz and facing the challenges of the blank page of his intended memoir at the same time.  He is at his wit’s end, even needing prompting by Norman of lines he has delivered over and over again.  It is a virtuoso performance, McPhillamy especially enjoying the high melodramatic moments, with bombastic outbursts combined with hilarity in delivering lines such as: What have I come to? I’ve never had a company like this one. I’m reduced to old men, cripples and nancyboys. Herr Hitler has made it very difficult for Shakespearean companies.

 

Sir has a loyal entourage propping him up.  Foremost is Norman, who, while Sir plays a central role, is the driving force in the play.  His emotional journey is emblematic of a line from the play, little people have big tragedies.  Sir argues with Norman, saying even Kings abdicate.  Norman however, has even more of an investment in “the play must go on” and it is that compulsion and their conflict that are the play’s central narrative. 

 

William Hayes, PBD’s Producing Artistic Director, reprises that role which he played some 20 years earlier.  Known more as a director, he is an actor at heart, fully realizing a role demanding cynicism, humor while mixing unrelenting devotion with regret.  The part has a high level of difficulty as there are a number of lengthy monologues which Hayes easily clears. 

 

Norman’s clever yet cutting remarks reveal the emotional toll of his devotion, Hayes playing him as both a comic foil and a tragic figure—a subtle echo of the Fool in King Lear.  Sir’s inability to acknowledge Norman’s loyalty echoes Kent’s suffering in King Lear as Lear descends into madness.

 

William Hayes

Hayes’ portrayal of Norman’s deterioration from sober to nearly downright drunk by the conclusion of the play is dazzling.  His resignation to the truth that he did not matter is delivered with such pathos.  Norman’s last words in the play is a plaintive little song sung by the Fool in Shakespeare's play, ‘Twelfth Night,’  He that has and a little tiny wit, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, movingly marks the tragedy of his life.

 

William Hayes and Colin McPhillamy

 

Sir and Norman make quite a twosome, trading affection and then barbs almost interchangeably, McPhillamy and Hayes frequently playing up the humor.  But it is Norman who delivers one of the central themes, directed at Sir who is making a case for not performing that night: Well, you’re a fine one, I must say, you of all people, you disappoint me, if you don’t mind my saying so.  You, who always say self-pity is the most unattractive quality on stage or off….Struggle and survival you say, that’s all that matters, you say, struggle and survival.  Well, we all bloody struggle, don’t we? I struggle, you think it’s easy for me, well, I’ll tell you something for nothing it isn’t easy, not one little bit, neither the struggle nor the bloody survival.  The whole world’s struggling for bloody survival, so why can’t you?  Hayes’ performance is haunting, bringing out the nuances of his character’s tragic life while handling a Yorkshire accent mixed with tipsy slurred speech.

 

Kelly Gibson, Colin McPhillamy, Denise Cormier

Denise Cormier portrays her Ladyship as Sir’s long suffering wife and leading lady with dappled shades of love and regret.  Her appearances brighten up the stage, whether in her street clothes or in various stages of costuming, you know you are watching a consummate actor.  She puts up with Sir’s histrionics on the one hand, but telling it like it is on the other: For God’s sake, you’re a third-rate actor-manager on a tatty tour of the provinces, not some Colossus bestriding the narrow world.   

 

Norman and her Ladyship are not the only morale boosters to Sir.  Elizabeth Dimon, who has performed numerous times on the PBD stage to great acclaim, plays his dedicated spinster stage manager who has silently been in love with Sir for over 20 years.  She successfully hides her feelings about Sir while going about her no nonsense job as stage manager.

 

Another long-time PBD actor, Dennis Creaghan, gives a skillful performance as Geoffrey Thornton, one of the fill-ins for actors demanded by the war effort, recruited to play the part of the Fool in King Lear.  His portrayal is droll and his oversized hand me down costume is one of the comic highlights.

 

Kelly Gibson plays Irene, the ambitious young ingénue who will use her feminine wiles to advance, efforts Sir will use to flirt with her.  It gives Norman the opportunity to confront her as Sir’s protector and Hayes’ demonic and threatening demeanor is unforgettable, a side to his character which was not that apparent before.

 

One of the few replacements in his company that alarm Sir is Mr. Oxenby, a would be playwright who limps from a war injury and is amusingly played by Gary Cadwallader, who in spite of his insistence of the division of labor rises to the occasion of creating the sound effects for the King Lear storm scene. 

 

Rounding out the cast are all PBD veterans, David A. Hyland (Kent), Cliff Goulet (Gloucester), and John Campagnuolo (Knight), each in non-speaking roles, but effectively fleshing out the back stage business.

 

J. Barry Lewis directs with his usual attention to detail and faithfulness to the script.  One can sense his enthusiasm for presenting this backstage depiction not generally privy to the audience and he mines every opportunity to present that world from makeup application and removal to observing the various stages that actors go through in getting into dress.  It helps that Lewis has worked with all these actors for a long time, and as they are all PBD veterans, this ensures their flawless interaction.  

 

Lewis cleverly laid out the dimensions for space on the stage, more than half devoted to the dressing room itself and then an invisible wall the audience quickly fills in with the rest of stage left signifying the backstage area.  Under his direction the production is part tragedy while expressing the existential angst of Theatre of the Absurd.

 

The scenic design by Anne Mundell incorporates that vision into the chaotic setting of the play, depicting how that space might have looked during WW II, right down to the detail of things worn down, a catch-all of props left behind, windows blacked out because of air raids, and the brick walls of backstage.  It is a masterpiece of stage design.

 

Kirk Bookman’s lighting had multiple challenges, basically lighting two distinct areas, the dressing room and backstage and then the stage off stage, where King Lear is being performed with light flooding from that area when the play was underway.  And, when blitz bombs are bursting, with windows painted black, lighting surges and dims as (presumably) outside transformers are affected.  Lighting added to the verisimilitude of the setting.

 

Costume design by Brian O’Keefe brilliantly captures the two time periods, costumes from Shakespeare’s time to the everyday dress of the 1940’s.  And in the case of Her Ladyship, her transition from street clothes into her Cordelia costumes is nothing short of breathtaking.  Sir’s costume conversion from street clothes, to worn underwear, to King Lear, wig and beard alike, is created with care by O’Keefe.  Some of the performers’ costumes are intentionally ill-fitting, as would have been the case given the era and the need to recycle everything.

 

Sound design by Roger Arnold captures the devices that would have been used at the time for sound effects to mount a production of King Lear, kettle drum, wind and thunder machines, as well as the sound of bursting bombs outside.

 

Special mention of the work of dialect coach Ben Furey helping the performers with British accents which were clear to this American audience, and in particular his work with William Hayes on his Yorkshire accent, reflecting Norman’s working class role.  And finally to PBD’s resident Stage Manager, Suzanne Clement Jones for overseeing a very complicated production.

 

If you love Shakespeare, history, and very fine playwriting and staging, PBD’s production of ‘The Dresser” is an extraordinary event.

 

Colin McPhillamy

My lords, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the manner in which you have received the greatest tragedy in our language. We live in dangerous times. Our civilization is under threat from the forces of darkness, and we, humble actors, do all in our power to fight as soldiers on the side of right in the great battle. Our most cherished ambition is to keep the best alive of our greatest poet-dramatist who has ever lived, and we are animated by nothing else than to educate the nation in his works by taking his plays to every corner of our beloved island…..Sir to the audience after acting King Lear

 

Photographs of actors by Curtis Brown Photography