Before designer Thomas Dunn throws light on the Is This A Room proceedings as set out by conceiver-director Tina Satter, theatergoers have the opportunity to read the following Playbill alert: “On June 3, 2017, a 25-year-old Air Force intelligence specialist named Reality Winner, suspected of leaking proof of Russian interference in the 2016 U. S. presidential election, was visited at her home in Augusta, Georgia, by the FBI. Is This A Room stages this visit word for word from the official transcript recorded that day.”
The two sentences go some way towards preparing audience members who are not aware of the case—and may even resist believing Reality Winner (full name: Reality Leigh Winner) is a real person. But the sentences don’t go far enough towards identifying a young woman and a noted war veteran who, as a National Security Agent contractor, leaked explicit information about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
Her action, confessed in the recorded FBI “visit,” during which she wasn’t advised of her Miranda rights, led to a conviction and a five-year prison term under the Espionage Act. Significantly, hers is the longest ever recorded for such a crime. It led to her being regarded at the time as “a head on a pike” for Donald Trump’s need to undermine the damning Russian-interference contention.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Without this background, the 60 minutes that Is This A Story takes to unfold is drained of its power in presenting the beginning of Winner’s ordeal—some of which she brought on herself, to be sure. For many of the audience members the verbatim reproduction may pass merely as an up-close look at FBI tactics, a kind of unmoored Dragnet episode. On the other hand, knowing the ominous details lends the quasi-documentary a solid grounding.
Satter is repeating the eye-opening interview-investigation on designer Parker Lutz’s multi-leveled, monochrome set. Taking place in the home that Winner (Emily Davis in a performance of many non-monochromes tones), Lutz provides no furniture. Okay, that isn’t quite true. Lined up at the back of the stage and separated from the playing area, there’s a line of metal folding chairs. Why? Only Satter and Lutz know.
As Davis and fellow actors replicate not only every word but every stammered word, every cough, and several charged moments when the figures speak over each other, she strongly resembles the actual blond Winner. Impersonating Winner well, she’s equaled by Pete Simpson as chief interrogator Agent Garrick, Will Cobbs as Agent Taylor, and Becca Blackwell as Unknown Male. Unknown Male? Since this is a word-for-word enterprise, there must have been a third man (not Orson Welles as Harry Lime) heard speaking a few times. In Satter’s replay, this interloper(?) moves about with some ominous frequency, sometimes even hovering by the increasingly uneasy Winner.
Which brings up some of the issues arising from a supposedly unadulterated transcript. On the one hand—perhaps the upper hand—Is This A Room is effective in illuminating the process by which the sometimes reassuring, sometimes intimidating FBI agents elicited Winner’s less-than-winning admissions.
On the other hand, adhering strictly to the word-for-word declaration introduces several questions. Okay, it’s word-for-word, but after a while, doesn’t the actors so assiduously replicating every verbal hiccup begin to feel like a stunt? Doesn’t this representation prompt a thought about what is the more efficacious manner of representing theatrical reality (no pun intended)?
And what of gestures? Undoubtedly, director Satter can’t be going for accuracy in that regard. Audio recordings don’t catch movement, though they may offer some sense of—can one say?—social distance. Yes, this is an instance of a reviewer’s being foolishly picky. And yes, a director has discretion that extends to lighting designer Dunn’s dousing all lights for indicating blacked-out classified information. Indeed, that’s rather clever, a smart stage equivalent of blacked out parts of printed transcripts.
But what of other more prominent digressions? As Winner begins to realize she’s in deeper trouble than she thought and as the agents ferret more information from her, designer Dunn flashes red lights high above the action. Often at the same time, an engineer sitting at a control booth sends co-sound designer Lee Kinney and Sanae Yamada’s aural stings to make certain no patron misses what’s just revealingly occurred.
Is this Satter worrying that to maintain audience interest, an uncompromised verbatim stage transfer might benefit from a little theatricalizing? She doesn’t need the superfluous rude awakenings to the multitudinous transgressions of the former administration.
For already making that unsettling Trump administration accomplishment perfectly clear, Satter deserves many thanks.
And now about Satter’s title: Is This A Room without a heavily implied question mark is not a typo popping up throughout this review. That’s the way it’s wanted, and perhaps there’s a completely reasonable explanation. If so, it hasn’t been vouchsafed to the press. Also, how about the title’s capital A? Nowhere in the verbatim account is there a reference to a B Room or so on. At one moment in the proceedings—If this messenger heard correctly—Unknown Male does ask, pointing to his right, “Is this a room?” and then to his left, “Is this a room?” He receives no answer. Whether his queries divulge anything illuminating, they remain a mystery here.
Is This A Room opened October 11, 2021, at the Lyceum Theatre and runs through November 27. Tickets and information: thelyceumplays.com
