Theatre in Review: Ugly Lies the Bone (Roundabout Underground)

	Mamie Gummer. Photo: Joan Marcus

We've known for years that Mamie Gummer is a good actress; now we know that she is a fearless one. She's the first thing we see in Ugly Lies the Bone, her face obscured by a virtual reality device. Then she takes it off and the awful reality becomes apparent: Her character, Jess, has returned home from three tours in Afghanistan as a member of the walking wounded. The right side of her face and part of her chest are marred by skin grafts. One arm is virtually useless. She walks in a halting fashion. And, as we quickly learn, she is never not suffering intense pain. This battered state was won only after enormous struggle. "It took three surgeries to give me back my eyelid," she notes.

Jess' psyche isn't in much better shape. Though the personality that she presents to the world is tough and intensely defiant, underneath she is deeply, almost pitifully, vulnerable. Any loud noise -- a sonic boom, for example -- can act as a trigger, unleashing a terrifying panic attack. Beach trips are out, as she can't be around sand. When a man sitting near her innocently ignites a cigarette lighter, she tells him, controlling her words as best she can, "Could you possibly not do that next to my face?"

Adding to Jess' challenges is the question of what she is going to do with the rest of her life. For the moment, she is living in her family's home with her sister, Kacie, a schoolteacher. (Their mother has been institutionalized with Alzheimer's; Jess resists seeing her, reasoning that she is hard enough to recognize as it is.) Kacie has made vague promises of getting Jess a teaching job, but they are quietly allowed to evaporate. Kelvin, Kacie's layabout boyfriend, offers Jess a job manning the counter at a cousin's pizza parlor. Jess, a trained teacher, who has already told Kacie "you are living my life," is horrified at the idea that this is the best she can do. The eternally oblivious Kelvin adds, "Normally the counter people stand, but my dad's cousin, he's the best, he's gonna let you have a stool."

As it happens, Jess is not alone in her bleak employment prospects; she is a native of Titusville, on the east coast of Florida, near Cape Canaveral, and the town's economy has been shredded by the end of the Space Shuttle program. Kacie has her teaching job, but Kelvin, having blown out his knees while working as a plumber, has decided to embrace the joys of a monthly disability check. Stevie, Jess' ex, once had a low-level job at NASA but now toils as a gas station cashier. In a speech that combines the personal and social dimensions of Jess' new life, she says, "The whole time I was over, I thought about coming back. And I did, because this is my home. It's the only place I've ever called that. But...it's -- gone I think. There's um, there's an Applebee's now...There never used to be that kind of -- the hotels all look empty. My friends moved away or are married -- and my mom..."

If Ugly Lies the Bone sounds like the most depressing drama of 2015, I hasten to add that it isn't, partly because of Gummer's almost brutally unsentimental performance and because of the glints of spiky humor buried in Lindsey Ferrentino's script. ("Are those capris you're wearing?" asks Jess, taking a good look at Kelvin in his half-length denim shorts.) Ferrentino is less good at fusing all these elements into a fully realized drama. For most of the play's running time, she shuttles Jess between encounters with Kacie, who struggles painfully to strike an optimistic note; Kelvin, who works extra hard at ingratiating himself; and Stevie, a genial, ambition-free loser stuck in a dead-end marriage, who doesn't seem to realize that his aimless flirting could have devastating consequences. Jess also spends a great deal of time with an unseen medical professional who is using virtual reality to treat her posttraumatic stress disorder. "We're going to build you a perfect world," Jess is told, and it is probably no surprise that, when she dons the goggles, she finds herself in a mountainous snowscape filled with such surreal touches as gently falling feathers. After all, it's the very opposite of her present circumstances.

The virtual reality scenes are impressively realized with the aid of Caite Hevner Kemp's projections, creating an environment that is starkly different from that of the other scenes. But it is here that the fundamental weakness of Ferrentino's play is revealed: The author is much better at suggesting the agony of Jess' life than in providing any hope; when she tries to do so, she comes dangerously close to conflating Jess' physical and psychological traumas, even going so far as to forecast a future healing that doesn't seem remotely realistic.

Still, under Patricia McGregor's direction, the entire cast offers incisively detailed work. Karron Graves' Kacie shines, especially in the scene in which she furiously explains to Stevie exactly what is involved in tending to Jess' ravaged body. Chris Stack excels as Stevie, who is fundamentally a coward when it comes to dealing with Jess, but also has the acuity to inform her, "You would not have stuck around town as the wife to a gas station attendant." Kelvin is the most caricatured of the characters, but Haynes Thigpen gives him an easygoing charm. (Signaling the diminished expectations of life in Titusville, he tells Jess, "I drive, I cook, I'm not on Viagra, I'm a catch, okay?")

And Gummer is well-nigh astonishing as Jess, her posture tentative but her chin extended, ready to beat up the entire world if necessary, until a wave of pain crosses her face and we see how desperately she is trying to hold it all together. Suffering or not, she is capable of a formidable takedown; speaking of Kelvin to Kacie, she says, "I was a gunner in my unit... I had to separate dead bodies from debris. And I got pretty good at identifying trash." She can also scrub all the sentiment out of a line like "I can't think of what I looked like" and still leave you moved. And there is nothing more harrowing than watching her struggle, unaided, to take off her t-shirt and don a sundress before going out for a sort-of date with Stevie.

In addition to Kemp's projections, which vividly evoke the fantasy escape created for Jess, the rest of the production design is equally apt. Tim Brown's set is a solid representation of Jess and Kacie's downmarket, slightly dumpy living room, with a stage left area that converts into a portion of Stevie's gas station. Dede M. Ayite's costumes are ideally conceived for each character, with an extra assist from Vincent T. Schicchi and Thomas Denier, Jr., who are credited with prosthetics design and creation. Jiyoun Chang's lighting and Jessica Paz's sound design are both very solid.

Design, specifically Cookie Jordan's wigs, comes into play in the scene in which Jess removes the scarf that has covered her head all along; previously, Stevie talked about her long, luxuriant hair, and now we see the scraggly bits that remain. It's a fine achievement and is brought to harrowing life by Gummer, as Jess stands there, utterly exposed. The actress has clearly been waiting for a role that really challenges her; here she has it, in spades. In the brief running time of Ugly Lies the Bone, a bright young talent becomes a major force to be reckoned with. -- David Barbour