Recent years have brought a spate of offerings from young playwrights depicting their peers as tethered to technology. But in Lily Akerman’s The Commons, we’re introduced to four flatmates, most in their 20s, who actually seek to communicate with each other in the flesh, on a regular basis—and the results, it must be said, aren’t pretty.
“It’s a beautiful thing to live with a group of people,” declares Robyn, the senior member (the character listings indicate he’s “at least 45”) early on. But by the time the one-act play reaches its conclusion—about 90 minutes later, though it feels longer—his theory has been thoroughly and exhaustively debunked.
Though The Commons is ostensibly set in the present, its characters weaned on Justin Bieber and armed with smartphones, Akerman is interested in something more timeless and primal: the challenges posed by connection and compromise—by other people, in short, particularly when they exist in constant, close proximity. Emmie Finckel’s spartan scenic design places the actors in a kitchen, with four chairs and a table as the centerpiece, surrounded by cubes storing essential items: clothing, containers of food, cleaning fluid. Tidiness and hygiene are recurrent concerns; at the first in a string of meetings, Robyn whines about a stovetop crusted over with dried tomato sauce. Unwashed dishes, facial hair and encroaching mice become subjects at other conferences.
Under Emma Miller’s direction, the actors deliver astute, credible performances—which may be part of the problem, as their characters can be as irritating to us as they are to one another. Ben Newman’s deftly passive-aggressive Robyn emerges as one of the more sympathetic figures, a middle-aged adolescent with artistic aspirations that will never be realized. It’s also not hard to feel for Dee, a graduate student who seems utterly lost in her pursuit of a comically complex thesis; Akerman gives her a funny, rambling monologue that Julia Greer serves with deadpan finesse. “I should have a chapter on 16th century concepts of pleasure,” she agonizes, before segueing to her worries about the fate of rhinos and the hair piling up in the sink.
Ben Katz has a tougher task as Cliff, a slacker who is forever offering lame apologies and excuses for his lack of responsibility. “He’s like one of those guys that just never learned the stuff growing up, like basic survival skills,” his ex-girlfriend, Anna (a vivacious Olivia Abiassi), explains to Dee during a visit. (One of the most uplifting scenes, ironically, features Anna, adding a fifth party with no traumatic results.) Between their formal meetings, in fact, the living partners converse in different pairings, trying to bond or gossiping about whoever’s not present. Cliff is a repeat victim, with Dee and the deceptively breezy Janira, played by a spunky Olivia Khoshatefeh, dishing and fretting about the man-boy in their midst.
In one of the play’s more compelling and unsettling scenes, Janira is inspired by reading Marie Kondo to set off on a downsizing spree. After going through her own clothes, she eyes the refrigerator and their collective food supply, and we become privy to the power games and fraught decisions that can inform a process as simple as, say, determining whether to hang on to a jar of kimchi.
Though one member of The Commons‘s quartet appears set to leave the nest as the play concludes, there is no sense that anyone has grown, or learned anything useful; they’re like Vladimir and Estragon, times two, only with lower expectations. It’s a depressing statement on a generation, let alone a species.
