Theatre in Review: The Wood (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)

	John Viscardi and Vladimir Versailles. Photo: Sandra Coudert

It's remarkable how quickly a fine actor, armed with some powerful words, can wake up a sleeping play. Shortly into Act II of The Wood, we encounter Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who, in 1997, was brutally attacked by New York City police. (In only one of many grisly details, he was sodomized with a bathroom plunger.) The violent incident has been discreetly staged, behind translucent panels, at the end of Act I, but now we see him in a hospital bed, recounting the details of his horrific experience to the Daily News columnist Mike McAlary -- and the words are far more savage than anything a director can stage. In Vladimir Versailles' quietly stunning performance, we see a man so brutalized that each word he utters seems forcibly wrenched from him. His eyes turned feral with terror, his scarred body flinching involuntarily from memories he can't erase, he is visibly struggling not to be reduced to an animal state. It's a remarkably controlled piece of work; without ever raising his voice, Versailles leaves you thoroughly harrowed.

There's another pretty good scene in Act II when McAlary sits down to interview Justin Volpe, the officer who brutalized Louima, a seemingly friendly encounter with the press that quickly turns ugly as the cop realizes that his carefully constructed snow job isn't going over with the reporter. Otherwise, The Wood is a sad case of rich, potentially sensational, material being fumbled and frittered away. The playwright, Dan Klores, is a distinguished documentary filmmaker -- his 2007 effort, Crazy Love, was one of the most riveting films of that year -- but on the basis of his previous play, Little Doc (also seen at Rattlestick), and now The Wood, he continues to demonstrate an alarming lack of facility as a playwright.

The Wood is about the last days of McAlary when, having survived a car accident and a subsequent coma, currently fighting colon cancer, takes on Louima's case, in the face of bitter opposition from the NYPD. (He is still smarting from an incident in which he reported that an apparent rape victim was a fake; he got a tip from the police, reported it, and pandemonium ensued.) He skips his chemotherapy treatments to follow the Louima case, flying, for a while, on the sheer adrenaline of making headlines. (He even fathers a fourth child while being treated for cancer.) There's a price for such activity, however, and McAlary, disregarding his health, ultimately pays with his life.

The Wood is about many things -- McAlary's love affair with journalism; his marriage to the staunch, long-suffering Alice; his rivalries; and, of course, the Louima case -- but Klores doesn't have the skill to keep all these narrative balls in the air. He falls back on the clumsiest devices -- long stretches of direct address, scenes in which characters state the blindingly obvious ("Michael, you have your chemo; you can't miss that.") in order to fill us in; scenes that awkwardly import an outsider to whom McAlary and Alice can deliver exposition. None of the many plot strands gets sufficient attention; there's no time to explore any ambiguities, such as the fact that Louima juiced up his story with the false assertion that Volpe taunted him with the infamous remark about "Giuliani time." Other charges are raised -- about McAlary's careerism and a certain tendency to cut corners -- but this is hagiography, not drama, and nothing gets explored in detail.

The script is constructed out of so many brief scenes that it becomes a play about transitions, with the poor actors forever having to haul out the hospital bed that is required every few minutes or so. The end of the play is so awkwardly rendered -- the director, David Bar Katz, is partly to blame - that the audience clearly didn't know it was over, leading to one of those awful curtain calls in which the actors come on stage in total silence before the applause belatedly begins.

Because Klores doesn't really write scenes-- he just disgorges information -- the actors are at a distinct disadvantage. Aside from Versailles, Michael Carlsen is effective as Volpe, his easy, smiling manner barely concealing the psychopathology underneath. As McAlary, John Viscardi is made to rely almost entirely on his natural presence and charm - which, at least, he has in abundance. The rest of the cast struggles with their thinnish roles.

The director has also presided over a rather curious production design. John McDermott's setting, with its dark, thickly textured walls, and scenic panels covered with strips of newsprint, has a strangely seedy look, although it provides a solid surface for Steve Channon's graceful projections, which include many New York City scenes. Joel Moritz's lighting has its moments, especially when he takes advantage of side lighting from the lightboxes placed downstage left and right. Kalere A. Payton's costumes and Janie Bullard's sound design are both perfectly acceptable.

Mike McAlary is a great dramatic subject, and, sooner or later, somebody will probably get a show out of him. (Nora Ephron has reportedly written a script covering much of the same material in The Wood, but its status is unclear.) It's a good thing that Rattlestick is so loyal to its writers, but, next to most of the others in the company's stable, Klores comes off as a tyro in need of guidance that he isn't getting. He has an eye for a story, but he desperately needs to work on his narrative skills.--David Barbour