“A Doll’s House”
Once again, going to the theatre taught me something I never
knew before. Reborning, the title of this would-be psychological chiller
by Zayd Dohrn, refers to an
actual thing. (Dohrn, for the record, is the son of oldtime radicals Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of Weather Underground notoriety.) That, for the similarly ignorant, is the creation by
specialty sculptors of photorealistic dolls of infants, usually deceased ones.
One purpose is so grieving loved ones can use them as a means of dealing with their loss. Yes, it’s freaky, and the freak factor is implicit in Dohrn’s play, which exploits such an arrangement. Most of the chill you’ll feel, however will be from the A/C, not the writing or production at the Soho Playhouse.
One purpose is so grieving loved ones can use them as a means of dealing with their loss. Yes, it’s freaky, and the freak factor is implicit in Dohrn’s play, which exploits such an arrangement. Most of the chill you’ll feel, however will be from the A/C, not the writing or production at the Soho Playhouse.
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| Emily Bett Rickards. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
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| Emily Bett Rickards, Paul Piaskowski, Lori Triolo. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Kelly was abandoned in a dumpster by her mother as a child,
with numerous screwdriver-caused holes in her abdomen. She earns her living as
a dollmaker (but not like Jane Fonda in the movie of that name),
using photos of her late subjects to recreate their every feature, down to the texture
of their hair, the sweat in their fleshy folds, and the rosiness of their cheeks.
She wears rubber gloves because her abusive parent also obliterated her
fingertips, killing all feeling in her hands (if not her troubled soul).
As played by Emily Bett Rickards, she’s attractive in a
funky, tank top-wearing, dyed red hair, tattooed kind of way. She may have been
in rehab but she still drinks heavily, smokes weed, and pops pills, struggling
to handle whatever demons may be disturbing her. Those demons lately have
cooled her sexual heat with Daizy (Paul Piaskowski), the boyfriend in whose
loft she lives and sculpts.
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| Lori Triolo, Emily Bett Rickards. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Her worktable is equipped with a video camera whose close-up
images of the doll’s features are projected at length on a screen she observes
across the room. Those images, showing her dabbing and poking at the face and eyes
of a doll, are initially disturbing because the doll’s blown-up cheeks and eyes
look so real. The impression soon fades, especially as the prop doll she employs,
when held up where we can see it, looks so ordinary, shabby even. This
technical drawback is among the production’s biggest problems, preventing belief
in the authenticity of what transpires.
A limp excuse for humor in this mostly dreary play is
provided by Daizy’s profession: he's a sculptor of latex dildos. He even wears one on
his first entrance. It’s his idea of a joke, you see, as it takes a second before
he realizes that the person he’s dicking around with isn’t Kelly but one of her
clients. She’s Emily (Lori Triolo), a well-dressed, middle-aged attorney, who
commissioned a doll of the child she lost lo these many years ago.
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| :Paul Piaskowski. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Kelly, who takes her work seriously, is extremely accommodating
to her clients, willing to make even the slightest adjustments in her dolls to
achieve full satisfaction. But nothing she does to fulfill Emily’s obsessive desires
gets her full approval, driving Kelly to offer Emily a full refund. Just like
shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond!
The deepening relationship between Kelly and Emily begins to
weigh on the dollmaker, leading her to suspect that Emily may actually be the
mother who abandoned her. Her behavior begins to show signs of even further
instability—some it so sudden it seems completely contrived.
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| Emily Bett Rickards, Paul Piaskowski. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
After the earnest Daizy puts aside his dildos for the real
thing and gets Kelly pregnant, he mediates between Emily, the mother who needs
a replica of her dead daughter, and Kelly, the abandoned child who needs a real
mother.
On paper, the hour and a quarter Reborning embodies a
promising idea for a tense drama of parental love and loss, and the lengths to
which people will go to deal with the trauma of grief, even when to others’
eyes they seem excessive if not pathological. Dohrn’s play presents the problem
but does little to dig beneath its surface.
The physical circumstances of Kelly’s unusual profession—including
offhand jokes about the movies’ scary Chucky doll—certainly have interest. But
the holes in Kelly’s abdomen (indicated by realistic makeup) are matched by
holes in Dohrn’s script. For example, a lot is made by Daizy about how DNA testing
would resolve Kelly’s suspicion regarding Emily’s being her mother. But why
doesn’t he simply sneak a bit of organic material (her spit in his eye, mayhap)
and not bother dealing with her refusal to provide it?
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| Lori Trialo, Emily Bett Rickards. Photo: Russ Rowland. |
Anyway, I’m taking this flatly written, flatly acted (aside
from the spunky Rickards, of TV’s “Arrow”), and flatly directed (by the actress
playing Emily) play too seriously. Very little about the production other than
its reborning premise is distinctive. That includes Peter Triolo’s so-so setting,
with its upstage wall including an elevator fronted by a metal, cross-hatched
gate.
One wonders, by the way, why the elevator is always there
for exiting characters but, when someone’s entrance is signaled on the intercom,
needs time to reach the apartment. Does it always have to descend before rising again? And why, one also wonders, has lighting
designer Aaron Porter, whose illumination my lighting-aware plus-one commended,
kept the interior of said elevator black? I kept thinking those who entered it
were stepping into an abyss.
Perhaps a more polished performance, with a tighter ensemble
and more interesting byplay, might produce a viable version of Reborning.
For now, though, the play is a stillborn requiring a master team of reborners
to make it look alive.
Soho Playhouse
15 Vandam St., NYC
Through August 3
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