Theatre in Review: Fire in Dreamland (The Public Theater)

	Enver Gjokaj, Rebecca Naomi Jones. Photo: Joan Marcus

About halfway through Rinne Groff's new play, the heroine, Kate, who has recently become besotted with filmmaking, describes her version of a cinematic sequence depicting the Dreamland fire at Coney Island. Dreamland, you should know (the script doesn't discuss this), was one of the area's big three amusement parks in its early-twentieth-century heyday. It was also the shortest lived, having been ravaged by fire in 1911, only seven years after its opening. Kate's monologue is a fine blueprint for a movie masterpiece: Thanks to her narrative powers, one sees the conflagration, started by sparks from an exploding lightbulb in a bucket of tar, the fire spreading in the blink of an eye, unleashing panic among people and animals alike. The animals are the real story: We hear about a lion-tamer and his desperate effort to keep his charges calm until help can arrive, leading to a grisly tableau of nature red in tooth and claw; the imagined sequence climaxes with the tamer, armed with a gun, confronting The Black Prince, the so-called "Nubian" lion who was a star performer at Dreamland. The speech, which is several pages long, is horrific, suspenseful, and, oddly, exultant, at least in the hands of Rebecca Naomi Jones, who plays Kate. Jones is best known for her work in musical theatre, but here her presence is effortlessly compelling, her delivery authoritative. We see Kate in the grip of her vision, to the point where she is shaking with excitement; it's a powerful evocation of what happens when inspiration grabs an artist's mind.

The speech also stands out as an uncommonly vivid piece of writing in a play that is otherwise marked by a persistent vagueness of purpose, even with a central situation that is all too obvious. It's very possible to spend most of the play's running time wondering where it is headed -- unfortunately, in a mood of bewilderment rather than tense expectation.

In her thirties, Kate is drifting through life. Uninspired by her position with the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which, later, she will dismiss as littler more than "securing tax breaks for fast-food restaurants," she is at a crossroads, and none of the paths appeal. "I keep thinking I'll just quit and go back to grad school again, but it's like there's nothing left to study," she says. "I already have two master's and a teaching certificate." Teaching was a washout, and parenthood isn't an option, either. "Babies are the worst," she notes, amusingly. "I just felt grateful for my brief experience working with junkies because the narcissism and the mood swings were like identical." There's an ex-boyfriend somewhere in the background, but he makes no matter.

You may well wonder what to make of a young woman defined entirely by her fecklessness, but her situation changes -- although not necessarily for the better -- following a chance meeting with Jaap, an aspiring Dutch filmmaker who has come to New York ostensibly to study his craft but really to make a film about the Dreamland fire. He catches her at a weak moment, on the day her father has died; after a standoffish couple of minutes, they end up in bed. From the get-go, he is a handful, blowing up at her mild remark about the difficulty of his project, disappearing for days at a time. But when he turns up with a few minutes of footage, shot surreptitiously at the zoo, she is stunned by his artistry and goes all in, throwing over her job to work on the film. Before long, she is maxed out on her credit cards, Jaap has left school, and duo has become a loose trio with the addition of Lance, another student, who, in his own deadpan way, is dazzled by Jaap, keeping him supplied with contraband camera equipment. Jaap is also markedly resistant to creative suggestions, taking umbrage at Kate's comments. She may not be able to see where this is going, but we certainly do.

Watching these three playing at filmmaking quickly proves unrewarding. Little or no progress is made, and there is a great to-do over a possible twenty-thousand-dollar grant, as if it would solve the problem of a film that would necessarily require a budget in the tens of millions. It's typical of their relationship that when she quits her job -- their only source of income -- without telling him, he responds, "Will they still pay you?" and launches into an attack on the "cheapskate American government" when he learns that they will not subsidize him via severance pay to her.

Of course, their relationship degenerates as it becomes clear that Jaap's concentration on his work overrules all else. It's all part of a life lesson designed to make Kate sadder but wiser. Because the action unfolds in Coney Island, 2013, the playwright makes a few passes at social significance with references to Superstorm Sandy, but these are half-hearted at best. Ultimately, this is yet another entry in the currently popular genre of winsome comedy-dramas about unfocused young adults and their search for meaning.

As indicated above, Jones has firepower to spare, but Kate, as written, isn't sufficiently engaging, and her willful blindness to her circumstances becomes increasingly grating. She is not helped by a scene in which, in a fit of exuberance, she tears open a hole in the wall of her apartment, hoping to restore a covered-over window; of course, she never gets around to plugging that gaping hole. Enver Gjokaj, a new face, gives Jaap a considerable layer of surface charm -- along with a convincing accent -- but he is just a foil, existing to first inspire, then disillusion, Kate. Kyle Beltran, who is fast becoming one of the most solid utility performers in town, is pretty much wasted as the super-nerd Lance. The actor also has the unenviable task of sitting upstage and operating a clapperboard each time the action jump-cuts back and forward in time.

If the director, Marissa Wolf, can't bring any clarification to this skittish tale, her overall handling feels professional. Susan Hilferty's set, dominated by a thrust stage that looks like a boardwalk backed by scaffolding, is efficient and her costumes are apt. (Love the fishtail dress for Kate to wear to the Mermaid Parade!) Amith Chandrashaker's lighting adds considerable visual interest, blending sunlight washes with isolation looks and using color treatments on the upstage wall and moving patterns on the stage to great effect, especially during Kate's monologue. Brendan Aanes adds plenty of well-executed sound effects, although we could do without the movie-style music used to underscore certain scenes.

Groff has a knack for writing plays on fascinating topics that somehow fall short of the mark. The Ruby Sunrise, an elaborately constructed drama about the early years of television, is full of engaging things, but never quite gels. Compulsion, an investigation into the political jockeying around the writing of the play The Diary of Anne Frank, somehow sells its story short. The Dreamland fire has been covered in many novels, including Kevin Baker's best-selling Dreamland. (It apparently also rates a mention in Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn.) Here it is merely a device in an unpersuasive drama about art and love. A great drama (or film) about this terrible event has yet to be written. -- David Barbour