For all but the final few minutes of Tracy Thorne’s ultimately devastating 70-minute monologue, she holds out on us. As both playwright and performer, she keeps us guessing with mounting frustration as to the meaningful details of the streamed story about which her character is unburdening herself.
Thorne calls the outcry Jack Was Kind, and indeed the complainer is talking about her husband of 26 years, a man who—she allows early in her increasingly agitated disquisition—is well known to all of us out here in one-on-one audienceland.
Yes, when in the final few minutes of her confession, she reveals the object of her fictionalized spin, we realize that we are quite familiar with the very specific public figure about whom she’s bean-spilling. She’s the nameless-until-the-very-last-minute wife to a man who in their private life has habitually been kind. She wants to stress that trait so’s to leaven the very public charge she will eventually make against him.
But here’s the fly in the dramatic ointment: Since it’s clearly Thorne’s intention to keep the man a secret until she’s good and ready to pull him, like a dazed rabbit, out of her author’s hat, it would be the thoughtless reviewer who spoils the surprise.
This reviewer will not be so cranky. Nothing of that fictionalized fellow’s identity will be vouchsafed here. Saying as much as his being someone who will resonate this week in particular with potential online theater-goers may already be too much. But let’s do go that far—and no farther.
The result of this review’s discretion does have its downside(s), particularly for this chagrined woman’s punches-pulled commentary. If this listener is any guide, auditors will grow more and more impatient with the tactics she employs to hold off on her shocker. “Get to the point” is one outburst a viewer might hurl at the screen. I did, and not just once with growing impatience as digressions accumulated.
In playwright Thorne’s favor, she does embed strong themes as she plods along. The most pertinent involves family dynamics. Her opening statement has adolescent daughter Flo asking, “How could I just sit there?” What Flo wants to know is how her mother was able to remain silent while her husband and Flo’s father committed his apparently execrable act—and then denied it.
In continued responses to Flo’s query, Thorne probes the nature of an unfortunately confused wife’s challenge on where she places her loyalty to erring husband Jack and to teenagers Flo and Eli. Within that conundrum is the societal question of a wife’s (sacred?) obligation to a husband, no matter what she knows, or suspects, he’s done. Remember: In court, it’s tradition that wives are excused from testifying against husbands.
As the addled wife compulsively looks for answers from within herself and from anyone else within earshot, she also gets around to the influences not only Jack and she have on their children but what Jack’s and her parents have had on them. How, she explicitly and implicitly asks, do we survive the worst of these character-building blocks. Often, she poses her questions outright and pauses for answers. Often, in the quiet of my living room, this reviewer shouted at the screen, “How would I know?”
As directed by Nicholas A. Cotz for the All for One Theater and sitting in what looks like an elegant space (at her own home?), Thorne runs the lengthy gamut of a guilt-ridden wife and mother’s emotions. At times the worried thoughts racing across her face are stopped in their tracks, signaling an actor at work. On the other hand, she’s shrewd about too frequently raising her voice, thereby not overwhelming viewers too soon with the pickle she’s in. Although the wife excuses herself for the occasional obscenity, she never harangues. The director and his author/actor are smart about that.
The last thing to be said about Jack Was Kind—Jack was especially kind when on wife’s thirtieth birthday he dispensed 30 gifts—is that Thorne’s decision to cling to her big revelation until the ending moments may not have been the wisest one. Had she told us at the beginning, not only might she have spared herself the audience’s annoyance but she also might have given herself the opportunity to dig even deeper into the lingering repercussions of a disturbing moment in recent history. Her choice to delay is a gimmick when a more profound piece is in her grasp.
Jack Was Kind was livestreamed on September 16, 2020, and will be performed through October 10. Information and streaming: afo.nyc
