There is plenty of belligerence in The Pain of My Belligerence. And there is a good deal of pain, mostly for its protagonist but also for its audience. Beyond that, it’s tough to figure out what to make of Halley Feiffer’s latest drama, which opened tonight in the tiny Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons.
The short play transpires through three scenes. In the first, a bespectacled young woman, played by Feiffer, is on a first date with a handsome but deeply unpleasant man, played by Hamish Linklater. He owns the restaurant they’re in, as slowly becomes clear, and he dominates the evening—the conversation, the space, even the woman’s body, which he frequently bites at and nuzzles. He tells the woman what she thinks; he pours her Pellegrino she doesn’t want; he contradicts himself, and sometimes her, and yet always insists that’s he’s right and she’s wrong. It’s a deeply uncomfortable scene—all that belligerence—and, as a viewer, you start to think that’s the point: Feiffer wants us all to feel what it’s like for a woman facing such toxic masculinity.
Also, as is briefly mentioned, it’s the night of Obama’s reelection, and so you wonder if this is supposed to be not merely one asshole but rather the manifestation of a dawning, Trumpian triumph of societal toxic masculinity. But there’s another wrinkle: The woman—her name is Cat, though it’s never spoken—remains kittenish. (His, also unspoken, is Guy, suggesting he’s an archetype rather than a person.) Cat, seemingly intelligent, a magazine writer who has previously profiled the brilliant chef who is Guy’s business partner and soon-to-be-ex-wife, is sometimes offended by him but never repulsed; in fact, she’s attracted to him, and at the end of the scene she throws herself at him. The implication, it seems, is that everywoman can’t resist awful everyman. (Hence Trump, perhaps?)
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★ review here.]
In the next scene, it’s four years later, and we’re in Cat’s apartment. The TV is turned on as she awaits Hillary’s inevitable victory, and the competent woman from the first scene has become a wreck. She’s been having an affair with Guy, in which she seems to get off by hearing how great his life is with his reconciled wife. She screams at him, then she begs for him. She’s also developed a debilitating case of Lyme disease, and so she doesn’t leave the house. Guy brings her groceries, pays her bills, and belittles her. When they hear Trump has won, their immediate response is to fuck. (Linklater demurely lowers his pants. Feiffer goes full monty.) Cat, it’s clear, is deeply damaged. The audience’s discomfort feels less strategic.
In the final scene, set in 2020, on the night we all hope Trump will lose reelection, Cat has come to visit Yuki (Vanessa Kai), the chef who was Guy’s wife. Guy, we learn, is dead. Cat, in a wheelchair, says she wants to write another piece about Yuki, but really she’s there to learn about Guy and talk about him, her only connection to the outside world. This is the least comprehensible scene, as Cat has turned into someone totally nonfunctioning, Yuki is kind and beautiful and graceful, and they come to some sort of communion. In the final moment, Cat tells one of Yuki’s daughters that when her sister is being mean to her, she can just leave—and it seems to be the first time it occurs to her that she could have done the same when Guy was being an ass on that first date all those years ago.
It’s hard to read Feiffer’s performance, but it’s nearly impossible to read her character. Linklater, for his part, skillfully deploys his usual warmhearted charm in service of this charmingly nefarious character. Trip Cullman’s forthright direction allows the mysteries of this story to unfold efficiently, even if they’re never quite resolved. Mark Wendland’s set is an Asian-influenced marvel, in which pieces slide and retract to transform a dark restaurant into a minimalist apartment into an elegant living room. (The moody lighting is by Ben Stanton, and the sound design, which provides cues to where and when things are happening, is by Elisheba Ittoop.)
Feiffer’s previous works include I’m Gonna Pray For You So Hard and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, both of which displayed a dark, brooding intelligence — and a gift for titling — in pieces that were both funny and quite affecting. Pain is informed by developments in Feiffer’s life, according to a note in the program: She suffers from Lyme disease, she had a bad breakup, she was unsettled by the election. She’s clearly working through all of that in this play. She hasn’t worked it through far enough yet.
The Pain of My Belligerence opened April 22, 2019, at Playwrights Horizons and runs through May 12. Tickets and information: playwrightshorizons.org
