57. PLAYGROUND
The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
My first trip to The Brick, a tiny storefront theatre
on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, was to see Derek Spaldo’s comedy-drama PLAYGROUND,
which he also directed for its brief run of less than two weeks. The funky neighborhood is the ideal environment for Mr. Spaldo’s play, set largely in a Brooklyn bodega. PLAYGROUND is oddly engrossing despite all the ways it
subverts our familiarity with conventional realistic dramaturgy and
performance. Mr. Spaldo, who’s from Rutherford, NJ, cites iconoclastic writer-director
Richard Maxwell as one of his influences. [Note: Mr. Spaldo has informed me in an e-mail that, while he has worked with Mr. Maxwell, "there is no specific language in any of our press releases that references Mr. Maxwell as an influence." I stand corrected; what follows, then, is my assumption of an influence, based on what I saw, and not on anything Mr. Spaldo has specifically acknowledged.] In an article called “Richard Maxwell
and the Paradox of Theatre,” British academic Theron Schmidt discusses Mr.
Maxwell’s work.
The seemingly simple aesthetic form of performances by
Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players, in which actors speak and
move with minimal emotional affectation and in which the scripts are
constructed largely out of apparently insignificant elements of everyday
speech, seems to baffle academic and popular critics alike. We read into
these choices a set of apparent contradictions and paradoxical strategies
which seem to challenge our conception of how theatre works. So Philippa Wehle
in Theatre Forum and Robin Pogrebin
in the New York Times both grapple
with the curious way in which they come to have emotional investment in the characters
in Maxwell’s plays, with Wehle asking “what is the appeal of these curious stock
figures who barely move and who deliver their mundane monologues in a flat monotone
[…]?” (75) and Pogrebin puzzling that “[s]omehow the less demonstrative their
behavior, the deeper they seem” (1). Paradoxically, [the characters]and their
troubles seemed unusually vivid and moving.”
I’m not very familiar with Maxwell, and I don’t
intend to make a close comparison of Mr. Spaldo with him, but I can verify that
Mr. Spaldo’s play corresponds in a number of ways to what Mr. Schmidt just
described.
From left: WooJae Chung, Aron Canter, Sarah Willis, Michal Morin. Photo: James Benson.
Let’s set the scene: the interior of The Brick is the
standard one shared by many tiny Off-off venues, a narrow room, once a
commercial establishment, boxed in by brick walls, with around 50 seats on
risers. The seats face a spare acting space with a simple white panel for a backdrop,
a rectangular folding table at stage right, a folding chair against the stage right
wall, and two folding chairs upstage left. The only scenery visible is in your
imagination, if even there. A few items, including a bottle of water, are on
the table.
The four characters are a scruffy, Korean-born high school
senior and bodega employee named Chris Spinella (WooJae Chung); Chris’s 22-year-old
bodega coworker, Ezekiel (Aron Canter); a girl in Chris’s English class, Kayley
(Sarah Wills); and Dad (Michael Morin), Kayley’s father, who owns a gas
station/garage. When the play begins and the lights (designed by Rachel
Chatham) come up sharply, Chris and Ezekiel are standing next to each other,
nearly shoulder to shoulder, facing front, holding a very, very long pause. After
the dialogue begins, the actors, who are close enough physically to the
characters they play to sustain credibility, generally perform
while standing more or less rigidly, usually while facing the audience, and
moving in semi-robotic fashion. The dialogue isn’t spoken robotically, however,
and is usually inflected with believable emphases and intonations, but the very
deliberate pacing and limited movement create a heightened reality that draws
you in and grabs your attention. A fight toward the end is staged with
deliberately simulated punches and kicks, yet, because it doesn’t hide its artificiality,
is more powerful than many ambitiously realistic stage combats directed by
specialists.
Surprisingly, given the dramatic flaccidity of the
characters and plot, this formalized staging makes
you focus more than you might expect on what the characters are saying. On the
other hand, PLAYGROUND thankfully concludes after 50 minutes; any longer and
longeurs would have set in.
In an interview, Mr. Spaldo mentions his use of overheard
speech as the basis for at least some of his dialogue. This gives the
characters an abundant pool of authentic street talk, replete with the familiar
profanities. On the surface, the conversations are about nothing of importance,
but there are subtextual streams exploring—no, let’s make that expressing— issues
of masculinity, parental responsibility, and personal aspiration among those with dead-end occupations. Just because they're there, though, doesn't mean these issues offer any form of enlightenment. The plot, which leads to an act of
violence, is more like several slices of life (thin ones, at that) than a carefully constructed
enterprise with fully articulated people. We learn as much as we need to
know to sustain dramatic interest and then, with no clear problem having been
set forth and no clear resolution to what appears to be an evolving relationship between Chris and Kayley, the play simply
ends.
Here's a rough plot outline: Chris and Ezekiel,
on a bus, talk about this and that, mainly Chris’s ex-girlfriend and the frequency with which Ezekiel masturbates. Kayley tells Dad that
she’s enjoying school. He wants her to work at his gas station this weekend and
she wants to go to a dance. Chris and Ezekiel chatter at the bodega about their
unseen boss, Daveed, and about strategies for picking up girls. Kayley enters and
recognizes Chris from class. He says he wants to "fuck" their teacher, to which
she registers mild distaste. Dad complains about problems at his business; the
work versus dance conflict returns. Dad goes to the bodega and asks for Daveed
but is treated rudely by Chris. Chris later tells Ezekiel that Dad, a total
stranger, might be gay; a mildly comic back and forth about homophobia and
racism ensues. Kayley’s dance night is spoiled when her friend backs out. She’s
not feeling well, so Dad, whose driving license has been suspended, is forced
to pick her up by cab. Chris tries to kick Dad and Kayley out of the store.
Chris mimes spray painting a wall (which I think is supposed to represent
Kayley’s car). Kayley says Dad is mentally ill (although no sign of this has
been visible). Dad fights with Chris and Ezekiel knocks Dad out. Chris
apologizes, sort of, concluding with coarse references to Kayley’s body. The
typically affectless Kayley says, “I don’t know how to respond to that. You
hurt me.” Curtain.
The characters, despite their artificially imposed
movements and demeanors, seem somehow familiar, but in a creepy way. They
remind you of people you’ve encountered somewhere, but not of anyone you want
to know. Creepiest of all is the ponytailed Chris with his disaffected
attitude, his disregard for social niceties, his mumbled crudity and stupidity.
The neon question of why a Korean born man raised in Flushing is called
Chris Spinella is never raised, adding another layer of bizarreness to the goings on.
Fortunately, Mr. Chung captures just the right note of alienation and cold
arrogance to make Chris chillingly yet fascinatingly repellent. Almost as weird in a different
way is Ms. Willis’s Kayley; at first, she seems the most sympathetic and
redeemable character, but, despite her mild protestations at Chris's nastiness, and the tension in her relationship with Dad,
she remains essentially disengaged, even when her father has been beaten to a pulp.
All the actors are fully committed to Mr. Spaldo’s
approach, making the experience that much more problematic. You want to dismiss
the play as shallow hokum but its peculiar atmosphere denies you the opportunity.
Nonetheless, Mr. Spaldo’s style has severe limitations, and unless he has more
substantial material with which to exercise it, I fear there'll be more
brick walls in his future.
