164. THE PATRON SAINT OF SEA MONSTERS
Marlane Meyer’s THE PATRON SAINT OF SEA
MONSTERS, at Playwrights Horizons, takes us on yet another journey into the heart of American trailer
trash country, this time, as the program informs us, to “a small western town, and the forests that surround it.” This backwoods place is
jumping with wife killers (real and suspected), alcoholics, prostitutes with STDs, and various other
sorts of human detritus. As expected, the men here—like those in SMALL ENGINE
REPAIR—find an endless source of humor in jokes about dick size. Rachel Hauck’s
odd, unattractive set is dominated by a clapboard façade that looks like a trailer
and serves for various locales; there are bare trees in front of and to the rear
of the façade, and whatever other elements are needed are brought on and off by
the actors. Stuffed animals, including a fox and a deer, stand about and watch
the proceedings. These, combined with the wearing of animal masks by the cast
when they move scenery about, are possibly intended to reflect the play’s notion
that everybody in the town is enslaved by their irrepressible animal natures.
Candy Buckley and Rob Campbell. Photo: Joan Marcus.
It’s in this
somewhat nightmarish place that Dr. Aubrey Lincoln (Laura Heisler), a local
girl who has become an obstetrician, has chosen to set up a clinic and look for
love. (Earlier in the season, the show NOBODY LOVES YOU thought it was funny
for the word “ontology” to be confused with “optometry.” In THE PATRON SAINT
Meyers tries to have someone similarly thick confuse “obstetrician” with “optician.”
This should give you an idea of the writer’s sense of humor.) The altruistic
Aubrey is damaged as well, forcing her to clump around with one leg shorter
than the other (she calls it “a leg length discrepancy”); she also has a peculiar
infatuation for the imaginary Saint Martyrbride, “patron saint of spinsters,
childhood infirmity, and sea monsters.” The bespectacled Aubrey, who normally wears one of
those goofy, wool animal hats you see around these days, has an
inexplicable thing for the out-of-work, boozing, semiliterate, socially awkward
Calvin Little (Rob Campbell), who offed his wife in the prologue. Over the
course of the play’s painfully bumpy two hours, Calvin and Aubrey will come
together promisingly at a bus stop in New Mexico; he, having served time in prison, where
he had time to read, will have morphed from someone who didn’t know the meaning
of the words “notice” and “timeline” into something of a philosopher. Books, he
claims, have changed his “inner monologue.”
Meyers’s
surrealistically bizarre black comedy mingles exaggeratedly farcical acting
with realistic performances. Fantasy elements, such as the frequent appearance
of Saint Martyrbride (Jacqueline Wright) fake-swimming across the stage along with a stuffed whale
held by an actor, or all those actors wearing animal masks, coexist
uncomfortably with straightforward realism. Under Lisa Peterson’s energetic direction,
six actors play seventeen parts, some of them so over the top you have to
appreciate the actors for their lack of inhibition. Candy Buckley stands out for
her three roles, especially as Calvin’s big-haired mother in leopard-spotted
tights. Jacqueline Wright, in four roles, can be pretty nutty too, but the show
itself never coheres and, for all its occasional insights and commentary on a
wide number of subjects, including the current state of the American economy (“NAFTA
my ass!”), it’s more of a turn-off than a turn-on. I suggest an intercession by the patron saint of playwrights.