Theatre in Review: 17 Border Crossings (New York Theatre Workshop)

	Thaddeus Phillips. Photo: Johanna Austin.

What with presidential threats to shut down the Mexican border, the fractious national debate about immigration, and the wave of nativist organizations sweeping across the UK and the Continent, a piece titled 17 Border Crossings would seem to have a nuclear button firmly affixed to it. At the very least, one might expect it to be a hearty serving of red meat to left-trending New York Theatre Workshop subscriber. In fact, the most surprising thing about NYTW's offering is its essential tameness. Despite some vivid servings of color and a commendable skepticism about modern political pieties, this piece wanders the world without getting much of anywhere.

The title tells all. The writer-performer, Thaddeus Phillips, has assembled a number of anecdotes, some of which are apparently autobiographical, others of which seemingly are not, about the vicissitudes of getting from one country to another. (The actor is billed as The Passenger, possibly a composite character pulled from his experiences and those of others.) Employing the second person, Phillips walks us through a series of incidents, spanning the years 1991-2017, ranging from comic to bizarre to heartbreaking. Most of them feature an observation or two that can bring you up short, forcing you to contemplate the eccentric and often arbitrary ways in which the world is arranged.

For example, in Split, Croatia, in 1992, "You strike up a conversation with the Croatian girl, who tells you that her mother drove her out of Dubrovnik a few years ago, when Serbs were shelling the city, by driving in a Chaplinesque zigzag formation to avoid Serbian sniper fire." (The use of "Chaplinesque" is an inspired touch, adding both humor and a touch of horror to the statement; it's a word that will return, near the end, to describe a Mexican immigrant scrambling into the US.) In a bathroom in Amsterdam, The Passenger, wondering why the overhead illumination is deep blue, suddenly realizes, "Under this light you can't see any of your veins! Ahh, these lights are so you don't shoot up heroin in the bathroom." Trying to enter Colombia, he confronts a border agent who tries to plant drugs in his luggage. Responding, with a mix of desperation and asperity, he makes an announcement in Spanish, then adds, for our benefit, "You've just told the agent that you are dating the cousin of one of Colombia's most famous telenovela TV actors: Victor Mallarino." He is ushered in with the warmest of welcomes. In Gaza, a taxi driver surreptitiously makes a delivery costing $146, smuggled in through the notorious network of tunnels linking it with Egypt: "The family bucket of KFC chicken is opened, the skin is cold and greasy, the fries are soggy, the ice in the Cokes is melted and the customer and her family are incredibly happy."

There are some stray amusements, including a meditation on the sexiness of Israeli border agents, any number of set-tos with petty bureaucrats, and a farcical attempt at getting into Bali in 2006 with a Croatian passport, stymied by an official using a list of countries dated 1983, when Croatia was still part of the former Yugoslavia. Offering food for thought is Phillips' observation that dental care in the US is so expensive that it may be cheaper to fly to El Paso, rent a car, and hop over to Mexico for a molar extraction. And there are deeply saddening episodes: On the beach in Spain, playing a travel game with his son, who keeps asking, joyfully, "Are we there yet?", he recalls the newspaper photo of a Syrian refugee and his daughter clinging to a precarious raft: "I thought if she too had asked her father the same question 'Are we there yet?! Are we there yet? Are we there yet?' and, if so, how had this man summoned up the courage to tell her that their journey was only beginning." Wolfing down chile rellenos in Mexico, Phillips encounters Pablo, whose unsentimentally rendered tale of woe involves his flight from murderous drug gangs, taking his wife and daughter to Chicago, where they establish solid careers; arrested by ICE in front of his little girl, he is deported and now is entirely focused on getting back to his family. Finishing his story, he quietly pays for Phillips' meal before vanishing.

But if many of these episodes land with a sting, others wander off without much of a punchline; they amount to a loose collection of bits that never coalesce into a unifying vision. The script consists of the sort of essay-style prose that can be a pleasure to read but which is difficult to make vivid in the theatre. Phillips is a physically agile performer but his vocal work underwhelms; he seems incapable of making the most of his own writing. (He does seem have to an infinite number of funny ethnic voices at his command.) It doesn't help that David Todaro's lighting design is so artily conceived -- with extreme isolations, blinder cues, and any number of effects using saturated, single-source fluorescent looks on the actor's face -- that it is often difficult to see what is happening onstage. (There is no set design, although Phillips makes clever use of a table, chair, and a downstage electric that he pulls up and down as needed.) Rather better is Robert Kaplowitz's sound design, which uses a battery of effects -- planes, ferries, and trains, among others -- to evoke a world of locations.

Inside this subject matter is a potent statement about one of the most vexing issues of today, but neither Phillips nor his director, Tatiana Mallarino, has been able to capitalize on it: This fiery material has been sabotaged by an overthought approach and a design that calls too much attention to itself. It's too bad that the company that added so much to the conversation with What the Constitution Means to Me hasn't managed to provide an equally powerful follow-up. --David Barbour