Bruce Norris’ Downstate – downstate evidently referring to downstate Illinois – unfolds in a correction home for male sex abusers.
Not, it’s safe to say, a place likely to elicit theatergoers’ instant sympathy – let alone empathy – although those emotions appear to be the ones Norris is after with a play co-commissioned by Steppenwolf and London’s National Theatre and already presented at both locales.
Perhaps the first pertinent Downstate comment is that it can’t quite be considered a play. The work has more the weight of a documentary on an extremely touchy subject.
It’s as if Norris turned on a tape recorder for about 24 hours in a correctional facility’s living room. He then transcribed what was said between and among the inhabitants as well as by the probation officer assigned to them and the few visitors dropping in. (Todd Rosenthal designed the set that includes a small kitchen and bedroom behind the living room, and a glimpse of a bathroom door off the living room.)
As savvy playgoers will expect, Norris does provide a late violent development and then a second jarring blow. But, considering his initial approach, these heightening events impress more as contrivances intended to lend the work the feel of a standard drama – if not a melodrama. (Hint as to the developments: J. David Brimmer is credited as fight director.)
To begin the proceedings, wheelchair-ridden Fred (Francis Guinan) is being confronted by middle-aged Andy (Tim Hopper), and wife Em (Sally Murphy). Andy, one of Fred’s child victims, has come to let Fred know he continues to regard him as irredeemably evil. Andy is so determined to report the disaster area his life has been that he returns, with Em, towards the Downstate conclusion. His intention: intensifying recriminations.
Dealing with the charges, Fred – a man who occasionally plays Chopin on the living room piano – remains the gracious and contrite host. From the get-go, then, Norris establishes his intention to place before audiences a conundrum involving the proper attitude with which to regard these men. He tacitly suggests that this is one of the times that theater exists to challenge spectators’ long held and inflexible beliefs.
For the rest of the play, Norris moves about the home, presenting one of the four current occupants (the home can accommodate five) as they confront their former crimes daily, as they observe or resist house rules as overseen by regularly defied probation officer Ivy (Susanna Guzmán).
Two who regularly balk at the boundaries are Gio (Glenn Davis), a cocky fellow committed to stretching house rules, and Felix (Eddie Torres), whose desperate, transparent lies don’t go far towards fooling the conscientious, intransigent Ivy.
Two who regularly play it safe are docile, often sweet Fred, and Dee (K. Todd Freeman), brimming with show-biz info and forever quick with a quip. (Dee, constantly amusing, registers as one of the recurring, appealingly caustic gay black men in recent dramatic literature. For another, check out Belize in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.)
As the residents and interlopers interact more or less documentary-style, Norris puts forth his implicit argument. Here, he’s saying, are sex abusers mostly past the crimes for which they were convicted and imprisoned. Now, assigned to what may or may not be a half-way house, they undoubtedly have blighted other lives but have surely ruined their own and are condemned to remain in the irreversible predicament.
Out of all likelihood for them is forgiveness, but what about understanding? Norris wants to know whether it’s possible. More than that, he likely wants to have audience members question themselves about a capacity for allowing the merest ray of understanding.
A reasonable guess is that some Downstate patrons will allow themselves the possibility of understanding. In all probability, others will dismiss it out of hand. They might even resent Norris for floating the very notion of revising their view.
Notably, the actors at work in Norris’ hardly convivial roles are uniformly formidable, and Pam MacKinnon directs them with authority. Most are Steppenwolf members, who, whenever they transfer to New York City, prove yet again how powerful the Chicago acting roster is. (Not least on that list is Steppenwolf artistic director Davis.) Freeman and Murphy were here earlier this year in the Steppenwolf transfer of Tracy Letts’ The Minutes.
Perhaps some patrons leaving Downstate will be thinking they’ve just been exposed to an unexpectedly controversial public service announcement – to an unusually tough-minded PSA. Truth to tell, they have been, and Norris is to be admired for programing it.
Downstate opened November 15, 2022, at Playwrights Horizons and runs through December 11. Tickets and information: playwrightshorizons.org
