At the beginning of Will Eno’s quietly haunting, uplifting new play, The Underlying Chris, a young girl appears onstage, dressed in a man’s suit, to describe what we are about to see. “The subject is life on Earth,” she declares—an announcement that should surprise no one familiar with Eno’s past work, which has addressed the absurdity, seeming futility, and contradictions associated with being human, earning comparisons to such masters of existential probing as Beckett and Albee along the way.
But however bleak Eno’s work may become tonally, down to its deadpan humor, it tends to carry a sense of yearning, of grasping for the elusive, that I’ve found consistently moving and elevating. And Chris may be his most open-hearted, spiritually ambitious effort yet—a journey from the beginning of a life to its end, through moments that may seem inconsequential (though they don’t always) but, notwithstanding a few slow passages, leave us with much to savor and contemplate.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★ review here.]
The life examined here is not a singular or specific one; the titular “Chris” is represented in various scenes by actors of different genders, races, and ethnicities, aging from a pre-adolescent boy to a middle-aged woman named Kristin to the elderly Christiana and Khris, respectively female and male. Identity is also a theme in the play, though not as it’s defined nowadays in political arguments and talking points. While Eno and director Kenny Leon present their characters as distinct personalities, they’re generally more interested in the commonalities that, yes, underlie our superficial differences.
Among those shared qualities are our capacities for conflict and disappointment. Tragedy enters the picture early for Chris, introduced as a child by a tenderly precocious Nicholas Hutchinson, who like the other cast members plays additional roles in other scenes. Later, the central figure, in his and her various incarnations, struggles with the demands of marriage and parenthood, with unrealized goals, with the indignities of age. Characteristically, and with typical wit, Eno charts the challenges posed by the most basic verbal communication, among other forms of interaction. “I look at almost anything humans do and I just think, ‘Helmets. Everyone should be wearing helmets for this,'” quips one Dr. Rivington (a droll Howard Overshown) to an adolescent Christine (a pert Isabella Russo, also cast as the girl who speaks the opening lines).
Eno’s flair for turning seeming non-sequiturs into simple profundities also informs more assuring observations. “A good day is when you find a bench,” the 60-something Krista (Lizbeth MacKay, sharp and touching) tells her grandson as they’re sitting in the park. At times, lines uttered by one Chris are repeated by another at a more advanced stage of life, like little drops of wit and wisdom we cling to, or pass on to others as a means of connecting with them.
Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design is essentially minimal, making canny use of dividers as Eno, Leon and the company—which includes Hannah Cabell, Nidra Sous La Terre, Lenne Klingaman, Michael Countryman, Luis Vega, Denise Burse, and Charles Turner, all excellent—traverse the frequently unglamorous but necessary places we visit during our journey from the cradle to the grave. At one stop, a DMV office, Kit, a septuagenarian played with delicacy and forthrightness by Countryman, laments, “I’m just starting to figure out who I am, and they take away my identification.”
Moments later, though, Kit remembers words imparted to him by someone or something, years earlier, he suspects: “Life is wherever we look.” It’s a simple, lovely notion, one of several that Eno leaves us with by the end of this gently transporting ride.
The Underlying Chris opened November 21, 2019, at Second Stage and runs through December 15. Tickets and information: 2st.com
