"John" at ACT

ACT photo by Kevin Berne

I've probably mentioned a few times now how much I have been looking forward to the current season at ACT, ever since they announced it. It being their 50th anniversary season, they pulled out a lot of stops, and reading the descriptions of the plays last year got me pretty excited. One that piqued my interest was the one we saw Friday night at the Strand Theater, "John," by Annie Baker.

Baker is a pretty hot property these days, having won a Pulitzer Prize for drama a couple of years back. And the blurb teasing the content of the show sounded intriguing. So I've been looking forward to seeing it.

The Play

First off, the play is long. The current production is three hours, including two intermissions. I didn't feel it really needed two breaks, but there are definitely two logical places to put them, neither of which would really work as the only break (too early or too late), so OK, two intermissions. When one person behind me saw in the program that the show would be three hours, he said loudly that that is "fcking long." I spoke with him during the second break, and he commented that he would never have come had he known it was so long. On the other hand, he was rather enjoying it. Go figure.

Anyway, the play: A young-ish couple arrives to spend a few days at a B&B in Gettysburg, PA, on their way back to Brooklyn from visiting family in Ohio. Elias was a Civil War buff in his youth, so had always wanted to visit Gettysburg. Jenny is going along, despite having no apparent interest in the visit. The B&B is chockablock with tchotchkes, and the proprietor, Mertis (but you can call her "Kitty") is a bit unusual, too. The whole setting is a bit surreal from the get-go, and the more we learn about Mertis and her life and the house, the weirder it gets. What's also clear from the outset is that Jenny and Elias have issues in their relationship, having nearly broken up recently. So there are things to work through. In a strange old house, surrounded by lots of strange stuff.

And eventually we get to meet Mertis's friend, Genevieve, who is both eccentric and blind, which adds to the offbeat environment.

All that said, it's kind of a funny setup, and there are some funny lines, but it's not a comedy. And though there are dramatic situations, it's not really a drama, either. It's a quirky play about some odd people in a very strange situation.

The Production

This is exactly the kind of play that makes one glad ACT has a second, smaller theater, because this show really works well in the fairly intimate setting of the Strand. It would be quite lost in the large space of the Geary. There is just one set: the main room of the B&B, and the audience both needs to be physically close to the stage and also sense the close quarters of the setting to make the emotions work.

Elias (Joe Paulik) and Jenny (Stacey Yen) make it pretty clear throughout that the characters are really not comfortable together. Indeed, they are so convincing at it that it's rather hard to imagine what brought them together in the first place, or how they've stayed together for three years. There really isn't much in the script that helps in this regard, either, so we're left with some questions there. Georgia Engel is quite marvelous as Mertis. You spend a lot of the time trying to decide whether she's just kind of odd and dotty, or whether there is something more malign going on. Ultimately I concluded that she's really much more on the ball than it seemed early on, but there are some decidedly loose ends in the script that are never resolved, and I can't decide whether that matters. It probably doesn't change the outcome of the play one way or the other, but it does leave one wondering why introduce the questions at all.

The fourth member of the ensemble, Ann McDonough as Genevieve, is quite marvelous, and manages to steal several scenes (and even part of an intermission). And I strongly felt the best scenes in the play were the ones where Mertis and Genevieve just sit with either Jenny or Elias and talk. The facade of normality in the heart of the bizarre is quite effective.

All in all, very strong acting, and a really nice set that conveys the discomfort of finding oneself in a place that is trying way too hard to be comfortable and has tilted well over into kitsch. Every time one starts to feel comfortable, either a character or the set will tick just a little off kilter and keep one guessing. Strange bedroom arrangements, heating quirks, background music, and a player piano all add to the environment of disquiet.

Bottom Line

The play is very well done and mostly quite enjoyable. I have to say that though it is well done, even a day later I not sure what it has done. Ultimately I enjoyed the quirks and twists, even while being annoyed by the visiting couple most of the time. But I remain unsure just what I am supposed to get out of it. Yes, it's about relationships that are crumbling, probably past the point where they should have ended. But that story could have been told much more simply, so I remain wondering what else I might have missed in all the oddities. Is there a reason we have a bunch of story lines introduced that never go anywhere?

All in all, I had a good time, and really appreciated the quality of the production. I enjoyed a lot of things about the writing as well, but I'm still left wondering what it is I missed, because I don't think Baker is really that sloppy of a writer.

On the other hand, a good friend of mine says the way to gauge whether a play is good has to do with whether one is still thinking and talking about it days or weeks later, and this one still has me pondering. I'm interested to know what others think. But I do feel the play is well worth seeing.