Airrah Beltran

Oddly, your description of the script is right on when you say that the play is a “beautifully written, nuanced and thought-provoking work with multiple levels of meaning…” Your interpretation of those meanings are, of course, perfectly valid. However, your supposition that her dialog and action were not intended to be humorous is simply that – a supposition. I, for one, think it’s funny that Andrew thinks his figurines are whispering about him. I think it’s funny that his brother has taken on certain affectations in order to be taken seriously in the fashion world. (I think lots of other things in the script are funny too, but I don’t want to give it all away.)

You say different choices would have made it more obvious that Andrew is a “person with demons he cannot control,” but it seems that you’ve come to that understanding quite easily on your own, by listening to the play and by watching this production. Andrew is himself an oddity, a figurine trapped inside a trunk of his own invention, awaiting the descent of a band of men whose intentions, if not decidedly nefarious, are at least questionable. Let us have a little fun down there before the roof caves in, geez.

The “official” blurb about this show trivializes it and does not do it justice.

This is a beautifully written, nuanced and thought-provoking work with multiple levels of meaning, from the more obvious – don’t let the possession of things dominate one’s life – to the far subtler questions of who/what we are, how we become/became who/what we are, and how much control we can have, if any, have over ourselves, let alone over others. Can we ever really “invent” our selves, let alone, to use the oh-so-hackneyed phrase, “re-invent” ourselves? And, who the hell are we, really, anyway?

Unfortunately, we felt the director missed the boat by keeping Brian McManamon’s performance at fever-pitch from beginning to end. At the opening of the show, the audience tittered uneasily many times, not because the dialog or action was humorous, but because it was being played so over the top that it felt as though it should be funny. This is a “tragic” work and true tragedy only really works when the audience can, at least on some level, connect personally, and identify with the character.

Mr. McManamon is obviously a very talented actor, and had the show started quietly, with the protagonist not appearing crazed from word one, his meltdown and ultimate destruction would have been far more agonizing and meaningful. A subtler and more delicate performance would have allowed us to know Andrew and to understand him, not as a buffoon, but as a person with demons he cannot control and so builds an artificial world he can manage.

This is a show that needed to build inexorably to its conclusion. With the protagonist played as a lunatic from the start, that conclusion became obvious very early on and lost not only its element of surprise, but also its impact. At least that’s what we felt. But some of the audience members were still in the dark about what was in the trunk. And that, we suspect, was not what the playwright intended. Although, with a work like this…. perhaps such ambiguity is exactly what she wanted.

Bottom line: Outstanding work. Definitely recommend it. Just try to remember it’s not supposed to be “funny ha-ha,” and listen carefully to the words.