For roughly the first half of its 90-minute run time, House Plant, a one-act comedy by Sarah Einspanier, suggests a sort of No Exit for the digital age, in which three navel-gazers weaned on social media and reality TV—not damned souls, in this case, but living, irritating searchers—are trapped together in a fashionably spare apartment. Technically, only one of the two women is there at any given moment, until the end, but both are somehow always present.
The young Einspanier, who made a splash last year at Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival with Lunch Bunch, suitably eschews naturalism to reflect a world in which we have all become unnaturally connected through our phones and laptops and other devices, so that both solitude and true communion can be increasingly elusive. At first blush, this would seem an environment in which House Plant’s human inhabitants could thrive. Chloe, a self-styled video artist infatuated with a fourth character named Agnes, a musician, aspires to greatness by pairing peach pits with intimate body parts. June, Chloe’s BFF, runs an ingredient delivery service for foodies, while her live-in boyfriend, Max, is an unemployed composer—when we meet him, he’s trying to craft “breezy” instrumentals to entertain bank customers holding for a representative—and streaming TV addict.
“Only three more episodes until the finalEEE,” Max tells June, upon entering. (It’s worth noting, for those who won’t get to read the text of House Plant, that Einspanier has written the dialogue and stage directions in her characters’ patois, complete with unnecessary or curious quotation marks, words slammed together or distorted for emphasis and, natch, an abundance of question marks and exclamation points.) June, alas, is over it; stealing—or curating, perhaps, in today’s parlance—an idea dangled by Chloe, she sets off for Hollywood and, in the cruelest of ironies, quickly lands a role on another series.
[Read David Finkle’s ★ review here.]
With Agnes embarking on a tour, Chloe moves in with Max, notwithstanding the fact that the two have never liked each other. But if their initial interaction, marked by barely repressed hostility, suggests that hell is indeed other people, Einspanier and director Jaki Bradley gradually guide the adroit actors to a different and unexpectedly affirming conclusion. The journey is hardly a smooth one, and it can seem labored or mannered at times; composer and actor Deepali Gupta, who also plays Agnes—she lingers throughout in a nook in Meredith Ries’s sparse, tidy set—provides an ambient score that is by turns alluring, cute and disruptive. Discord is indicated by what sounds like crashing waves; at other points, Gupta plays the violin and makes shushing noises into a mic to evoke gusts of wind. (Cha See’s lighting matches the aural intensity, at times shooting vivid pastels against the apartment’s walls, normally shown painted a bright chartreuse.)
Medical emergencies that periodically interrupt feel appropriately surreal; they could be scenes enacted on the set of June’s show, which is set in a hospital, or prophecies, or actual crises. Einspanier is concerned with what animates us and keeps us vital before, beyond and in spite of technology; the play opens with “weird body biology scientific-y sounds,” and one word in particular—“CELLLLLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSS,” as it’s written—uttered repeatedly, by Agnes. It’ not the last we hear of that general subject, and the three central actors deftly juggle the wacky spirit and flashes of earnest reflection the material demands.
Ugo Chukwu’s goofy, tender Max—whose new obsession becomes blogging, about his (imagined) mountain-climbing adventures—is the most transparently human, or humane, at the start, but Chloe’s evolution, captured in Molly Bernard’s taut, witty performance, is both funny and moving. “I’m actually really tired of underground clubs filled with bubbles,” she tells Max, in one of several piquant revelations Einspanier provides for her. Emma Ramos’s June is more subtle and ambivalent; that she earns our empathy is a tribute to both the actress and the playwright’s generosity.
There is another presence in House Plant, also craving nourishment, for whom communication is even more difficult—impossible, in fact. I’ll offer no spoilers, except a suggestion to reread the last sentence, carefully. Sometimes, as this imperfect but affecting and engaging new play reminds us, answers are more obvious if we simply seek them out with fewer distractions.
House Plant opened February 7, 2020, at the Fourth Street Theatre and runs through February 22. Tickets and information: nytw.org
