Theatre in Review: The Great God Pan (Playwrights Horizons)The Great God Pan begins with a meeting between Jamie and Frank, childhood playmates who haven't seen each other in a quarter of a century. (They are now 32.) To say the least, they make a study in contrasts. Jamie, a journalist, is drably dressed, bland of demeanor, and barely engaged in the conversation. Frank, a gay massage therapist, sports a leather vest, trendy haircut, and many tattoos. He also remembers their friendship with an intensity that contrasts with Jamie's empty conversational niceties. Just when you are starting to wonder where this is going, Frank drops a bomb: He is filing sexual abuse charges against his father; in a confrontation between them, the question has arisen: Did the father abuse any of Frank's friends? Jamie says he remembers nothing of the kind; perhaps another of the circle might know of something? After a pause, Frank says, "Based on what he described, I thought you would be the most likely one to remember. That's all." And those simple words, in all their lack of detail, are all it takes to destabilize Jamie's life; even as he insists he can't recall anything about Frank's father -- for all practical purposes, that era of his life is a nearly blank to him -- the evidence piles up that something is terribly wrong. It's there in the halting, ambivalent way he greets the news that his girlfriend, Paige, is pregnant. It's there in a pair of troubling encounters with his parents, each of whom casually provides evidence that Frank may be onto something. And it's there in his meeting with his former babysitter, now battling dementia in a nursing home, which is suffused with an inexplicable melancholy. Frank's words have an almost incantatory power over Jamie; as in a bad dream, the harder he tries to hold himself together, the more his grip loosens. If The Great God Pan is starting to sound like a case study or a mental-illness-of-the-week television film, I'm not telling it right. Amy Herzog has penned a chilling little short story of a play, opaque in its details, but powerfully driven by a free-floating anxiety. Each scene reveals fresh reasons for fear. Jamie is strangely unable to focus on the idea of becoming a father. His relationship with Paige has been marked by periods of sexual dysfunction. Jamie learns about the terrible conflict that nearly shredded his parents' marriage, and, most horrifyingly, of the set of events -- none of which he recalls -- that placed him in alarming proximity to Frank's father. The Great God Pan can't work without the right actor playing Jamie, and Jeremy Strong captures him in all his denial and hidden anguish. It isn't that his Jamie is uncomfortable in his own skin; it's that he's barely there. (Frank, upon meeting him, describes him as looking like the computer-enhanced portrait of one of those missing children seen on milk cartons.) Jamie's slide from a state of emotional cruise control to profound discomfort is charted with seamless skill; suddenly, one detects profound conflicts behind his pleasant poker face. The director, Carolyn Cantor, is always at her best with plays that maintain a strong note of suspense, and, under her guidance, Jamie's dark journey moves at a relentless pace. The rest of the company has been equally well cast. As Paige, who has troubles of her own, Sarah Goldberg is a model of emotional transparency. (Paige, a former dancer, was sidelined by an injury and is trying to build a career as a nutritionist and counselor; she also wants to become a mother.) Goldberg also makes the most of the play's humor, especially when Paige notes that Jamie unconsciously becomes defensive around gay men, adopting new terms of address. ("You get all macho," she says. "'Man' this, 'dude' that, Man, it's really good to see you, dude.") As Frank, Keith Nobbs makes every line vibrate with unspoken meaning, his gaze firmly directed at Jamie as he searches for signs of distress. There's solid work from Becky Ann Baker, as Jamie's surprisingly blasé mother; Peter Friedman, as his father, who must make a deeply embarrassing revelation about his marriage; and Erin Wilhelmi, as one of Sarah's clients, an adolescent with an eating disorder who may share an emotional profile with Jamie. Joyce Van Patten makes her single appearance as Polly, the erstwhile babysitter, into a quietly devastating portrait of the diminished powers that come with age. Surprisingly, Cantor's production suffers from a problematic design. Mark Wendland's set features an enormous, boxy structure, filled with doors and portals, which is reconfigured for each scene. (It, along with the rest of the set, is covered with images of greenery, a possible allusion to a childhood trip to a creek, an event that stands out in Jamie's memory.) It is an awkward, almost ungainly structure, however, rarely suggestive of any of the play's locations, and unattractive to look at on its own terms. In any case, it is well-lit by Japhy Weideman, who carves out a new playing area for each scene. Also, Kaye Voyce's costumes are filled with telling details about each character, and Darron L West's sound design adds helpful details such as birdsong and street noises. The Great God Pan ends where it began, with Jamie and Frank facing each other, but, this time the scene is tense from the get-go, as Jamie is poised to confront a terror he never knew existed. Some will be dissatisfied with the ending, because Herzog isn't interested in revealing all. Her task has been to remove the stable underpinnings of Jamie's life, one by one, until he is profoundly shaken. It's a mission she performs uncommonly well. --David Barbour 
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