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Peer Reviews The Unseen Reviewed by Todd Zeigler Entire contents are copyright © 2007, Todd Zeigler. All rights reserved.
While all-around excellence is almost a foregone expectation at Actors Theatre, the Humana Festival of New American Plays can easily be called a writers' showcase. The annual festival is a proving ground for authors endeavoring into all manner of expression, medium, and message. Assignment to the opening slot of the festival surely makes any such fortunate playwright rattle his iMac to pieces. But L.A.-based Craig Wright's The Unseen is a stirring exploration of issues both timely and timeless that will linger long after the festival curtain descends. An overture of sirens sets the oppressive atmosphere. The immediate counterpoint is the two main characters, Wallace and Valdez. They are prisoners, trapped for a decade or more in an unfathomably complex organ of detention for a brutal, unnamed regime. They are subjected daily to obscene -- and vividly described -- torture, which they have come to regard laconically as inevitable and routine. They maintain each other's spirits and sanity. And each has a hope for escape. Wallace enacts his first, meticulously plotting a clever egress which depends upon a sole X-factor: Mr. Smeija, their cruel and surprisingly harried jailor. Wallace has his chance. Valdez gets his with the arrival of a mysterious, anonymous new prisoner. His intuitive, blind faith in the possibility of salvation is a powerful concurrent to Wallace's obsessive cognition. But Valdez is too much at the mercy of their torturer. Though Smeija's brute power is greater than their wills combined, the pair end up with greater fortune -- and uncertainty -- than they could have imagined.
Actors' ability to recruit the finest dramatic talent on the continent is ever-reliable. Richard Bekins as the great intellect Wallace and Gregor Paslawsky as Valdez, he of simply faith, give a grace and hard-won dignity to two richly-drawn characters. Though of opposing philosophical persuasions, both Wallace and Valdez are men of great faith that draws, even drags, them beyond the most desperate conditions. Bekins and Paslawsky play their highest highs and most miserable lows with vivid humanity that is enthralling to watch up close (get the best seats you possibly can). Richard Furlong finds the hilarious paradox of Mr. Smeija: a man of deep, sensitive human nature, committing the most inhuman atrocities. Smeija's obsession with the torture of his prisoners comically contrasts with his foils' resignation to it. It is a task to sympathize with him just as he gets set to horrify you all the more. The show does ask a lot of the audience in the way of patience and deliberation. The spatial relationship between Valdez and Wallace is not entirely clear until Smeija enters. The two prisoners' activities are compelling to watch. One gets antsy waiting for their resolution. There is great payoff for watching closely, but the price is patience. Wright is quite ambitious in crafting a play that teases at so many issues -- faith, politics, human nature, reality vs. insanity -- without making too many declarations. It is difficult to write about the show's content without giving too much away or ingraining prejudices. I hope to remain enticingly ambiguous, inviting the viewer to his own experience of a densely textured work. One feels an ode to Beckett throughout. The play is quite akin to Godot: a contrasting, highly dynamic duo, trapped in a vast nowhere, beset by a hopeless routine and a sadistic, callous interloper beset by his own flaws. Ambition leads to disillusionment -- twice -- and a climax that is only a moment before a whole other adventure. Wright has grand aspirations with this piece. I think he succeeds. Even within renowned showcases of innovation and expression, I have found few items matching this play in richness and complexity. I have also found few things to be this simple: Unseen shouldn't be. Go.
The Unseen
Posted Mar. 2, 2007 |
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