Theatre in Review: Scene Partners (Vineyard Theatre)

	Johanna Day, Dianne Wiest. Photo: Carol Rosegg

If you ever get lost in a mysterious, shifting reality, pray you have Dianne Wiest to see you through it. In John J. Caswell's slightly wobbly, but inventive, new play, she is Meryl Kowalski, a Midwestern widow of a certain age who, having seen her unloved husband in his grave, heads for Los Angeles. "Within a year, I will rise to fame and fortune as an international film star," she declares, unworried by her total lack of experience. She also ignores the sneers of Flora, her needy, drug-addict daughter, who predicts, at best, a career of playing "diaper-shitters" or doing "retirement home background work." Replies Meryl, a classic desperate housewife, "I have been acting all of my life! It's about time I get paid for it!"

With this setup, for all we know Scene Partners will be a quirky, feel-good comedy about Meryl's kooky Hollywood odyssey. (You can imagine the film version, starring, say, Diane Keaton.) But, already, strange signs are appearing. We see close-ups of Meryl on a video screen, apparently taking part in a screen test, but for what? And, when she hops a train for California, she suddenly appears to be in Russia, frankly propositioning a conductor named Konstantin. ("We cannot escape the past, my darling babushka," he tells her.) Next, she barges into the LA office of talent agent Herman Wasserman, whom she charms at gunpoint, impressing him with her emotive skills. Herman hooks her up with Hugo Lockerby, an Australian acting teacher-cum-guru, who begins a class with this announcement: "Today, we will be discussing a Kabuki concept borrowed from Noh called jo-hakyu. I will deliver my lecture over the course of the next hour as I cross the stage at a snail's pace." Hugo is so taken with Meryl's apparent talent that he decides to make a film based on her life, with eight actresses playing her at different ages. An incensed Meryl, told that she will be considered for the oldest iteration of herself, puts together the mother of all auditions, creating a performance piece that relives the key events of her tragically deprived life.

Got all that? We're just getting started. At times, it seems as if Scene Partners will fly apart from sheer centrifugal force, so busy is it whirling in all directions. But, before one can dismiss it as an assemblage of ill-fitting dramatic elements, you may notice other, more disturbing details. More than once, a person speaking to Meryl appears to be possessed by her late husband's malign spirit. In class, she is terrified when her fellow students suddenly start talking gibberish. And, as she admits to her doctor, one of her marriage's grim legacies is a history of head trauma. As we go skidding through the crazy, unstable world of Scene Partners, the questions multiply: Is Meryl in the early stages of dementia? Are we inside one of her nocturnal dreams or daytime fantasies? Is she simply rewriting her life to make it more colorful -- like, for example, when she insists that her abusive marriage was the source material for A Streetcar Named Desire?

It's typical of Caswell's sleight-of-hand technique that when Dr. Noah's diagnosis is given, we don't hear it. Then, when Meryl appears on a talk show to plug Hugo's film, the interviewer confesses, "It's hard to distinguish your actual biography within this illness you've dubbed as funny business." "Is that what bothers you?" Meryl wonders. "Not being on solid ground?"

Assuredly, solid ground doesn't exist in Scene Partners as Meryl bounces from tragedy to triumph, sometimes seeming to lose her way. But whether she is deeply in denial, slipping into irretrievable mental illness, or whatever, Wiest finds something equally formidable and heartbreaking in Meryl's quest. Running around in a shapeless day dress and overcoat combination (in Southern California!) that gives her the general dimensions of a potato sack, she is utterly persuasive as a woman who, by her own admission, has "forgotten her body" and is bent on claiming every available bit of pleasure and success before the lights are forever dimmed. She's no pushover -- when her whispery, nice-lady voice drops into basso profundo territory, watch out -- but she is also deeply wounded and aware of the odds against her. (When the doctor gently asks if he may take her blood pressure, she replies, 'I've been strangled before. Many times.") In a funny way, she is the most heroic character to land on a New York stage in some time.

In constructing a play as wayward as the corridors of Meryl's mind, Caswell takes risks that don't always pay off. Scene Partners often switches tones jarringly, creating irritation as well as a sense of disorientation. The playwright leans heavily on 1980s tropes: Meryl casually dismisses the concept of The Golden Girls as an idea that will never work. Her doctor is named Noah Drake, just like Rick Springfield's General Hospital character. The Corey Hart anthem "Never Surrender" is heard all too frequently, for perhaps obvious reasons. Despite a smashing double turn by Josh Hamilton, the scenes with Herman and Hugo seem to come from a brasher, louder show-business farce. Other scenes, including Meryl's youthful, summer camp fling with a young French woman, feel awkwardly fit into the overall pattern. A recurring image of Meryl trapped in an elevator shaft is like something lifted out of an old Ionesco play.

Then again, maybe that's Caswell's point. If you really want to get psychoanalytic about it, the whole eight-phases-of-Meryl concept behind Hugo's film may be the playwright's way of suggesting that her long history of mistreatment has left her with a fragmented personality in need of reintegration. And even if it sometimes feels lost in its own tangents, Scene Partners is never dull, thanks in part to Rachel Chavkin's direction, which blends strong performances with the startling use of projection technology. In addition to Hamilton, who gives one of his best performances, the first-rate cast includes Johanna Day as Meryl's sister, who, for a while at least, functions as the play's reality principle; Eric Berryman as the sympathetic Doctor Noah; Kristen Sieh as Flora and a television personality who just might be Diane Sawyer; and Carmen O'Herlihy as an assortment of secretaries, nurses, and actresses. (Several cast members play multiple roles.)

In Riccardo Hernández's bold scenic design, horizontal and vertical video panels move around, acting like "wipes" in films while unleashing a flood of imagery, courtesy of David Bengali that includes vintage movie studio logos, shots of iconic LA landmarks, and footage from Doctor Zhivago, The Professionals, and Gold Diggers of 1933, as well as key scenes from Caswell's script. Given the otherwise spare scenic design, Alan C. Edwards' lighting goes a long way toward suggesting various locations. Patricia Marjorie designed the enormous tapestry depicting scenes from Meryl's life, which is seen in her biographical performance piece. Brenda Abbandandolo's costumes once again show her strong grasp of period styles; she also provides some nifty character touches, such as the sad little cloche hat that Meryl favors. Leah Gelpe's sound design includes some unsettling crashes, karaoke music, and solid reinforcement for the video scenes.

Caswell, who burst on the scene in 2022 with the nerve-wracking thriller Man Cave, following it with the ambitious, but less successful Wet Brain, clearly remains an original, allergic to repeating himself and with deeply honed theatrical instincts. If Scene Partners has its eccentricities and excesses, the play is well worth it for its complex, sometimes confounding heroine. "I'm here," she says. "Bloody, bold, and resolute." And in Wiest, the playwright has a scene partner who can't be topped. --David Barbour