"EMPTY" at Stage Left Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
The intriguing irony that pervades Brett Neveu’s latest play, "Empty" – receiving its world premiere at Stage Left Theatre – is that the true drama resides in the blank spaces, not the dialogue. And while a playwright naturally works within the realm of words, one of the most compelling aspects of this work -- rooted in the malaise that accompanies a predictable, by-the-book life – involves the audience’s need to fill in the details of these obscurely etched characters.
On the other hand, a deliberate vagueness has the ability to leave viewers feeling, well, empty – and Neveu can still challenge himself to sharpen the dialogue and give the characters a clearer sense of a beyond. The second half in particular cries out for more substantial climactic or, more appropriately, anti-climactic moments. Neveu can push his arguments further and infuse his characters with more dimensions (lest they threaten to disappear from our memory altogether).
Yet his purpose appears to be a subtle – and devastating – illustration of ordinary people enmeshed in their unfulfilling choices. They are sleepwalking in a perpetual denial of their real potential for happiness. Their comfort-seeking shifts in priorities have caused them to emotionally implode. They have become the ultimate hollow people. So the obscurity hovering over this play is justified. It’s also heartwrenchingly effective.
In "Empty," Neveu explores two Baby Boomer couples whose seemingly secure lives show signs of unraveling in the first act, set in DJ and Ben’s new Chicago-area town home on Sept. 8, 2001, then dissolve into a puddle of ineffectuality by the second half, which takes place in their home one week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Neveu has an astute capacity to mirror the unadorned, stream-of-consciousness rhythms of everyday conversation. "Empty" epitomizes the voyeuristic play as we eavesdrop on a casual evening in which two married couples sip red wine, nibble on brie and make stilted remarks about meaningless things – from Bob Dylan’s music to long-ago vacations to the best deals at a wholesale wine outlet.
These empty nesters, who came of age during the Flower Power era, seem to be preoccupied with their impending retirements at the same time they’re oblivious to the larger social issues that once defined their generation.
The playwright has crafted two couples grindingly but politely at odds with each other. DJ, the only person who has the courage to confront her demons and the cultivated niceties that keep people in contented oblivion, can no longer connect with her husband Ben. She becomes unhinged at the sound of his voice – even though Ben is an accommodating guy who appears to be sensitive to DJ’s increasing emotional swings. Whenever they are together, their conversations point toward compromise (from getting an RV to moving to Minnesota) and often end in a frustrated changing of the subject or abrupt clamming up.
The less developed pair – the self-aware Todd and his kind, folksy but obviously unsatisfied wife Mary – have recently come into DJ and Ben’s life. They talk about their more free-spirited days in California in the 1970s, but it does not appear that they were radicals or lived in a commune. In fact, neither couple seems to have been fiercely active in the protests of their younger days, or they simply may have forgotten the ferment of those times.
Neveu also raises the question of how much any one person owes its generation and how deeply must one be involved in the political process to bring about concrete social change. Interestingly, DJ poses this notion to the other characters in relation to America’s collective ennui, sincere unawareness or conscious donning of blinders prior to the Sept. 11 atrocity.
During the second act, DJ’s hyper-awareness of small talk is akin to the unbearable pain experienced by an animal exposed to a high-pitched whistle. At the very moment she reprimands her husband and friends for their need to gloss over the truth with vapid, hide-saving conversational diplomacy, they cling even more fervently to their comfort zones. The play’s most poignant irony is that the empty and uncomfortable chatter of pre-9/11 gives way to a more confounding urge to speak about the tragedy that then crumbles into total speechlessness post-9/11.
These people now exist in a frighteningly real void. Even their awkward fussing about with food reflects their helplessness in the face of an uncertain future.
Director Jessi D. Hill promotes an arresting extemporaneous rhythm within the actors’ speech. The entire play, in all its repressed rage and dueling moral dilemmas, truly exists in Marguerite Hammersley’s tear-withholding eyes. As DJ, she epitomizes the questioning knowledge that threatens all around her – and Hammersley conveys the bleakest of realizations through non-verbals that give one the sense she is about to erupt or curl up in a ball.
She is briskly paired with Thomas Edson McElroy as the cautiously understanding Ben. He effectively toggles between comforting his wife and exacerbating her angst. Morgan McCabe turns in a sincere and giving performance as Mary, whose independence has been slowly eroded by her husband’s oblivious put downs. Only Jim Schmid delivers an artificial and consciously acted performance as the self-centered Todd – at odds with the seamless believability of the other actors.
Robert G. Smith’s extraordinary set, accented by Kevin Heckman’s real-time lighting, engulfs the audience in Stage Left’s minuscule performing area. A new contemporary town home, complete with skylights and a working open kitchen, extends practically into the lobby. But a grating sense of unease seeps through the home’s neatly ordered walls.
Audiences may leave with a similar feeling of dissatisfaction. There are a lot of holes in Neveu’s script. But those holes also point to the greater tragic truth of a society stuck at the bottom of an emotional abyss that separates self-absorption from the desire for social change.*
"Empty" runs through October 26 at Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield. Tickets: $15-$20. Call 773-883-8830 or log onto www.stagelefttheatre.com.
