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| The Cast of "I Was Most Alive with You" (photo: T. Charles Erickson) |
Choices in life are at the center of the remarkable new
play by Craig Lucas, I Was Most Alive with You, currently
being given its world premiere by the Huntington Theatre Company. In
this unforgettable work, the audience must also make choices, but
more about this later. Lucas, renowned for past theatrical works
such as Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, Light in the Piazza and
American in Paris, the screenplay for Longtime Companion,
and the libretto for the opera Two Boys, is a graduate of
Boston University with a BA in theater and creative writing. His
careers include that of an actor, playwright, screenplay writer and,
with this production, director. His varied background informs and
transforms this latest effort which both lives up to one's
expectations and exceeds them, creating what can truly be described
as unique. “Unique” is an often misused term, frequently
expressed as one of degree, as in “more unique” or “most
unique”. Here one may accurately ascribe this adjective to this
play, as it is unquestionably and undeniably “one of a kind”.
For starters, the entire work is performed by an exquisite company of
seven actors, while simultaneously being signed (in American Sign
Language, or ASL) by an equally fine troupe of avatars who are also
performing, acting, rather than only signing. What results is an
immersive experience unlike any other you've ever seen. Or heard.
As many plays have in the history of theater, this one
begins with memories of a family gathering for a holiday celebration,
namely Thanksgiving dinner. Knox (Russell Harvard) states that he is
grateful for three things he formerly thought were curses: being
deaf, being gay and being an alcoholic. While society as a whole
might view them as disabling, he sees them as gifts. The enduring
analogy for his apparent trials and tribulations is one of the oldest
examples of storytelling, the suffering visited upon Job (which Lucas
pointedly notes is part of Jewish, Muslim and Christian heritage, all
conveniently represented on stage). The reaction of the righteous to the woes inflicted upon them may be
wisdom or may be despair. In the case of a person who is
hearing-impaired, she or he might use the lowercase 'd' to refer to
being deaf as the audiological fact of not hearing sounds, whereas
others who share this challenge choose to self-describe with an
uppercase 'D', refering to Deaf people who share the same language
(ASL) and culture. This was the choice dealt with in the 2010 play
by Nina Raine, Tribes , which, not coincidentally, was seen by
Lucas, who decided to write his play specifically for its amazing
actor, the aforementioned Harvard. In Lucas' play, there's drama and
there's Drama, just as there are deaf people and a Deaf community.
And, as is the case often with syntax, there's much more to it than
whether it's expressed in lower or upper case.
The characters alludes to this as another choice, but
more obliquely than in the decidedly more political realm of Tribes.
Knox brings home a guy who has been living with him, Farhad
(Tad Cooley), a heavy drug user who was recently homeless. Assembled
for the traditional holiday dinner are Knox's father, Ash (Steven
Goldstein), Ash's wife Pleasant (Dee Nelson), Knox's grandmother
Carla (Nancy E. Carroll), Ash's best friend and co-writer Astrid
(Marianna Bassham), and Carla's companion Mariama (Gameela Wright).
The rest of the cast includes four wondrous “shadow interpreters”,
Joey Caverly, Amelia Hensley, Monique Holt and Christopher Robinson.
But Lucas isn't basically writing about deafness, but
about what it means to believe in other people and the choice for
life even in one's darkest moments. The playwright has stated that he
intended this work to be a comedy, a drama, and a tragedy, in the
sense of “ bad things happening to people”; if “at enough
distance, it's comical..closer to the characters, it's drama...insert
yourself wholly into...the characters' flaws, it becomes tragedy”.
As the program quotes Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr): “humor is, in
fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer.
To meet the disappointments and frustrations of life, the
irrationalities and contingencies, with laughter, is a high form of
wisdom”. At one point in the play, Goldstein's character refers to
faith as what bridges the gap between what you know and what you
feel. As one final tragedy befalls, the question arises as to what
is left to know or to feel when one is deprived of a hitherto vital
form of human communication and connection.
The cast, all eleven of them, are flawless, as are the
technical contributions. The intentionally monochromatic Set and
appropriate Costume Design by Dane Laffrey provide the perfect focus
needed, as do the Lighting Design by Mark Barton, Composition and
Sound Design by Daniel Kluger, and Projection Design by Lucy
MacKinnon. If one were to single out especially memorable elements,
they would have to include the ingenious set that complements but
never distracts, the way that Carroll has with tossing off a barbed
one-liner, and of course the phenomenal Harvard at the core of the
play. Theatergoers are continually confronted in this work with
choices: whom to watch, whom to listen to, when blessed with a
cornucopia of duplicate performances. (The analogy limps, of course,
as these are people not puppets, but one is reminded of Avenue Q,
in which, after a very brief period, one forgets where the actors end
and their alter egos begin). Close attention must be paid,
especially at the close of Act One, when a deluge of plot points
cascades, more Noah-like than Job-like.
The expressed intent of the production is to ignite a
conversation about the play, which is, after all, what theater is all
about. By and large, Lucas is hugely successful. This may develop
into his finest play; it's certainly his most religious. One could
hope for more back stories for some of the characters (when did we
last ask a play to be longer?). But this first exposure to a live
audience will no doubt help shape its future form, and it will
certainly have a future in the theater. As was the case with that
trilogy of intention (comedy, drama and tragedy in one), this play is
by turns promising, engrossing, fabulous, frustrating and disturbing,
at one and the same time a desperate and life-affirming, truly
enthralling achievement. Without divulging any spoilers, suffice it
to say that there are echoes of the short story The Lady, or the
Tiger?, in that each audience member is called upon to provide
some resolution, taking on a much more active role than one is used
to in live theater. And that's also when theater is most alive with
us.
Craig Lucas, we hear you.
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