Theatre in Review: And I and Silence (Signature Theatre)

	Trae Harris, Emily Skeggs. Photo: Matthew Murphy

The two women who populate Naomi Wallace's new play are seen in two time frames: as prison mates in 1950 and, nine years later, as the inhabitants of a single room in an unnamed city. In the author's bleak vision, one place is no better than the other. We first meet Jamie and Dee in 1959 as, fresh out of confinement, they prepare to apply for jobs as housemaids, washing their dresses in tubs and psyching each other up to make good impressions on potential employers. Not that they have high hopes: In an echo of Jean Genet that resonates throughout the evening, they take part in faintly sadomasochistic role-playing games to prepare them for dealing with sadistic mistresses. "Lick my knees," Jamie commands, then reprimands Dee for obeying.

This sort of fooling around is a habit they picked up in jail, where we see them self-training for careers as domestics. Jamie, who is black and better understands the lay of the land, demonstrates how to move about the house, dusting vivaciously to signal the joy she takes in her work. Such dishonest, people-pleasing behavior is largely lost on Dee, whose inability to control her anger keeps landing her in "the hole." After one trip there too many, she is sent to another facility, leaving Jamie, who is dismayed at Dee's recklessness, bitterly alone.

In its relatively short running time, And I and Silence has only one point to make: Life behind bars might be terrible -- Jamie describes the routine as "Sleep, eat, get hit, hit back" -- but life outside of it is, if anything, worse. That's because it's the mid-20th century and Jamie and Dee's sexually charged and racially transgressive relationship leaves them with nowhere to go. "Folks see us together, they think you're my maid," says Dee. This, combined with their inability to find or hold jobs, leaves them trapped with nothing but their increasingly stifling intimacy. As their electricity and food start to run out, they finally embrace the fate that has seemingly been waiting for them all along.

You've probably guessed by now that laughter is at a premium in And I and Silence; so are suspense and emotional engagement. In fact, I can't remember the last time I sat through such an oppressively dreary piece of work. That Wallace is a writer is beyond question; she has a tough, terse way with words that, I'm guessing, is very powerful on the page. Whether or not she is a playwright is another matter altogether. The narrative has no central point of tension or conflict, just the slow erosion of the characters' circumstances; for all their vicious acting out, Jamie and Dee make a remarkably passive pair of heroines. Wallace strips them bare of any enlivening details; we know very little about their crimes and next to nothing about their pasts. Most glaringly, Wallace has no knack for writing dialogue that says a little but suggests a lot; the lines have a flatly declarative quality that keeps the characters at arm's length.

Then again, Jamie and Dee barely count as characters; Wallace is content to present them as one-dimensional vessels of suffering, doomed by nature of their gender and willingness to cross racial boundaries. The idea that they may play some role in their own destinies never seems to have occurred to their creator. Basically, the world hates them for being women and they must be punished. Case closed.

For this reason, sequence after sequence seems the result of a writer's whim rather than the cold logic of character. It's amusing when Jamie, recalling a hot date, says, "We was at the drive-in, but without the car." But when Dee says, "I dreamed I fucked my mother. I went down on her," it's easy to be as perplexed as she looks. A scene in which the women imagine finding boyfriends who remind them of Gary Cooper and either Bo Diddley or Conway Twitty plays totally false, and stray bits of information -- such as the news that Jamie's mother died by drowning with her head in a bucket or that Dee's mother was thrown down the stairs -- are little more than additional stray clouds on an already deep gray horizon.

Caitlin McLeod's production draws fine performances from the four-person cast -- Trae Harris and Emily Skeggs as the adolescent, incarcerated Jamie and Dee, and Rachel Nicks and Samantha Soule as their adult counterparts. The production is also elegantly designed, with Rachel Hauck's spare setting -- a small raised deck surrounded by metal grating and connected via a staircase to an upper gallery level -- striking exactly the right tone of abandonment. Bradley King's lighting evokes both the sterile emptiness of a prison cell and the dim squalor of a cheap rented room; he has also devised cues that make for seamless transitions between the play's two time frames. Clint Ramos' costumes and Elisheba Ittoop's sound design, which makes good use of such period tunes as "The Girl Can't Help It," are both solid contributions.

But given its flat dialogue, fatalistic atmosphere, and characters who lack a single surprising detail, there is never any reason to care what happens to Jamie and Dee. This lack of spontaneity, combined with the author's obvious debt to The Maids, results in an airless, derivative piece of work. At the end of 90 minutes, I felt I had been sprung from prison myself. -- David Barbour