“Do you like magic?” the title and sole character in Will Eno’s Thom Pain (based on nothing), asks early in the play. “I don’t.” Don’t take his word for it, though. Mr. Pain—masterfully played by Michael C. Hall in Signature Theatre’s new production—is , as Eno’s stage directions warn us, “unpredictable and maybe a little unknowable.”
Thom Pain is, in fact, something of a magic act in itself—a bleakly comic, brutally detailed study of human frailty and suffering that somehow, over the course of roughly 70 minutes, becomes life-affirming. The play, originally produced in 2004, literally begins in darkness: A cigarette match is lit and abruptly snuffed out, twice, so that we can’t see Thom as he first addresses us, reciting various definitions for the word “fear.”
“Do you need to see or hear me? If so, sorry. Not yet,” he teases, before the stage is suddenly illuminated, revealing the trickster, who will continue messing with our heads as he fumbles around inside his own. Eno’s directions also tell us Thom “should seem capable of great cruelty, perhaps due to his having suffered great cruelties himself.” Sound familiar? “So. Our story,” Thom says, before pressing on.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★ review here.]
To say that Thom is us, that he serves simply to represent both our shared existential hopelessness and our untapped potential, would sell short the vivid specificity of his accounts—of elusive parents, of youthful adventures that end in tragedy and horror; of love that would be perfect, or is perfect, except that it’s messy and impossible. Eno, whose richly idiosyncratic use of language has made him one of the most distinctive creative voices of his generation, is addressing the challenges of self-expression; Thom is fascinated with words, and his shenanigans belie a genuine desire to find the right ones to reach us—to somehow confirm that he, and we, are not alone in the universe, despite all evidence to the contrary.
“You really are very forgiving. To let me get lost like this,” Thom says, one of several compliments he’ll toss out between baiting the audience and sharing memories full of loss and physical and spiritual sores, not to mention pretty much every body fluid you could think of. Director Oliver Butler, who won an Obie Award helming Eno’s The Open House at Signature, has Hall move jaggedly about the vast stage, which scenic designer Amy Rubin has turned into a sort of post-apocalyptic survivor’s den, with scattered items including ladders and a space heater. Jen Schriever’s lighting is purposely, artfully erratic; at one point, Thom requests that the stage be lit differently, and is not indulged.
Eno, Butler and their collaborators are showing us humanity at its rawest and most essential, and Hall—ironically seductive (as Thom should be), wearing a suit and tie, no less—captures the desperate longing beneath Thom’s caustic wit, while serving that last factor impeccably. The character and play rely on an unsettled audience, as he appears to confront audience members from the stage, and eventually leaves it to search the crowd for “not a volunteer, but, a subject”—another soul to toy with, or commune with, from a closer distance.
Without giving too much away, Thom Pain does conclude with a disappearing act, one in which no one disappears. Like Eno’s compelling, unnerving, searching creation, we are stuck with ourselves, and with each other. “Isn’t it great to be alive?” Thom asks, and it’s not an ironic question—not entirely, anyway.
Thom Pain (based on nothing) opened November 11, 2018, at Signature Center and runs through December 2. Tickets and information: signaturetheatre.org
