Theatre in Review: Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. (Public Theater)

	Deirdre O'Connell. Photo: Joan Marcus

Caryl Churchill is showing a certain shrinkage these days, yet she remains as eerily buoyant as ever. The first quality can be found in this quartet of one-acts now at the Public; the first three are like tiny, spiked blunt instruments wielded mercilessly against the complacent. The airiness is supplied partly by scenic designer Miriam Buether, who fills the stage with platforms floating in darkness or, in one case, an immaculate white box that rises to admit the spirits of the dead. But, Churchill, a reliable reporter of the bad news that has happened, is happening, is about to happen, finds a strange exhilaration in the bleak details; knowledge provides her (and us) with a kind of power. For the first half, anyway, this guided tour of her mind reveals it to be as agile and darkly witty as ever. In James MacDonald's staging, it's a kind of vaudeville at the end of the world, complete with circus acts!

Indeed, there's something of the music hall in Buether's design, with its blood-red curtain and a proscenium lined in lightbulbs. It's a counterintuitive approach to an evening mostly spent contemplating the violent impulses seemingly embedded in humanity's DNA, but when has Churchill ever done the expected? Oddly, this contemplation of war and peace is much more compelling on the war side, resulting in a dispiriting second half, but the playwright remains fearless throughout.

The first piece, "Glass," kicks things off on a surreal, unsettling note. Confusing is more like it: The title is meant to be taken literally, with the title character at least part of the time occupying a shelf with a clock, a plastic dog, and a vase. The four of them have quite a colloquy, leaving one to wonder if Churchill has succumbed to an unaccustomed attack of whimsy. Without warning, she shifts gears, slipping into an account of abuse and toxic secrecy that immediately erases one's reservations. Ayana Workman underplays the title role effectively, letting the horrific words speak for themselves.

As far as I'm concerned, Deirdre O'Connell earned goddess status long ago, but in "Kill," she is quite literally a deity, resting on a cloud and representing all the gods of the classical tradition. She begins with a story that sounds suspiciously like the Oedipus legend, except it keeps going: Barely taking a breath, she spins out a narrative, equally preposterous and terrifying, marked by murder, rape, incest, and mutilation. If "Glass" places its crimes in a hushed domestic context, "Kill" wonders if they aren't part of civilization's foundations, built into the myths and legends that continue to shape our thinking. It begins with a mad, Beckettian rush of words: "We take this small box and shut the furies up in it, they're furious and can't get out, they say let us out and we'll be kind. We gods can do that sometimes, quieten the furies, we can't do everything, we don't exist, people make us up, they make up the furies and how they bite." In her mastery of this thorny text, O'Connell is a most persuasive spokesperson for the Furies.

Like "Glass," the third piece, "What If If Only" strikes a deceptively sentimental tone: Sathya Sridharan sits at a table, talking to the air in hope of reaching his deceased loved one. (One imagines it is his wife, although the text never says so definitively.) "We once said if one of us died, if there was any way of getting in touch, we should do it," he says, adding, with heart-rending intensity, "I thought we'd be old." Soon, however, he is visited by his lost love, or is she? "I'm the ghost of a future that never happened," she says, adding that he can make her real, although she cannot say how. This is only the first step in an existential nightmare that populates the stage with a small army of alternate futures. The denouement arrives with the appearance of John Ellison Conlee as another phantom of sorts, offering a pronouncement about time that frames us all as tiny figures in a vast, onrushing, unstoppable parade. The effect is simultaneously dismaying and thrilling, a key sign that one is in Churchill territory.

After so much scintillating writing, the final (and longest) piece, "Imp," disappoints. Conlee and O'Connell are Jimmy and Dot, middle-aged cousins living on the dole due to being "medically unfit." He claims to suffer from depression, which he treats by running, although one look at him leaves one in doubt about that. She is a former nurse, forcibly retired following a prison term for abusing an elderly patient. Largely confined to easy chairs, they bicker and fulminate about the state of the world. They are joined by Niamh, a relative from Ireland with a new job in the UK, and Rob, a young rover currently sleeping rough in a nearby cemetery.

In the evening's thesis/antithesis structure, following three plays rich with incident, "Imp" is about stasis, or, rather, the slow progression of mundane events, never mind the catastrophes happening offstage. Dot has committed crimes, Rob is divorced and has had his struggles with addiction, and Niamh's father killed himself. Dot rails about child abuse and immigrants. Niamh is frightened that she will suddenly fall prey to religious mania or reckless gambling. Rob keeps telling stories about folks he knows that sound suspiciously familiar: "I was talking to this fellow in the park sat on a bench, blind man, he was telling me he once got in a fight and knifed someone and then he started going out with the widow, and it turned out they were his parents." Stop me if you've heard that one.

But not even Caryl Churchill can make compelling drama out of no drama at all. Her point, that everyday happiness is achievable when one shuns destructive impulses, is laudable but dull and unworkable onstage. There is a certain ado about a bottle kept by Dot, which, she believes, contains an imp that potentially rewards wishes and wreaks revenge. But this, as they say in the cinema, is little more than a MacGuffin, a device that by itself means little or nothing. O'Connell's handling of Dot's dialogue is never less than delicious. ("I remember sex. Dimly. How it makes you do things. You look at it now and you think What? Whatever was that?") And Conlee makes a fine sparring partner. But "Imp" vastly overstays its welcome.

MacDonald's production is first-class all the way, including Isabella Byrd's stunning lighting design, especially a series of blackouts in "Imp" that create the sensation of watching the cast and set being sucked into a black hole. Bray Poor's sound design, taking in thunder, drums, traffic, and other effects, is effective. Enver Chakartash's costumes fit the needs of each play. I have no idea why circus acts are interpolated into the evening but the acrobat Junru Wang and the juggler Maddox Morfit-Tighe are certainly diverting.

Whatever one thinks about this uneven, intriguing, occasionally maddening attraction, it is fascinating to see how, well into her ninth decade, Churchill continues to chart her path, write her rules, and set her own agenda. Her iconoclasm remains bracing; it's a quality that many of her peers could emulate more. --David Barbour