Prepare for a bit of a culture shock as you enter vast Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory – that grandiose monument erected by “silk stocking” Civil War veterans essentially in their own honor. At the Hall’s reverberant center, within a small rectangle set beneath a ziggurat of stadium seating, is a convincing simulation of the kind of facility that London might provide by way of temporary housing.
Distinct from a shelter, this institutional configuration of cramped rooms (resembling a repurposed high school) is meant to accommodate those likely to remain without a home long-term – however long it takes them to secure real housing, with the unreliable help of a caseworker, Gloria, whom we hear only as a disembodied, peremptory voice.
Current residents include the over-affable, oddly ominous Colin (Nick Holder), who shares a room with his compos mentis but incontinent elderly mother, Barbara (Amelda Brown, luminous); a young family of four, co-headed by the ripely pregnant Emma (Janet Etuk, strong to the core); and a few free-floating foreigners who, subsisting solo, have the option of keeping more to themselves, although each does make some attempt to reach out.
Director/creator Alexander Zeldin, an acolyte of Peter Brook, developed the script – part of his “Inequalities” series Beyond Caring – through several years of community input and on-site immersion. His goal, as he describes it in a program note, was to explore “isolation and insecurity in a very public environment.” The portrait is veristic, timely, and compellingly dramatic.
Between the cursory communal kitchen and single shared bathroom, the residents are all up in one another’s business. Not to trivilalize, but any one who has ever had a problematic roommate will easily relate to the self-protective stance which each resident learns to adopt.
The residents are understandably on guard against the slightest micro-aggression, real or imagined. Colin, in particular, has a disconcerting tendency to lean in where he’s not welcome. He’s a big-baby type: physically ominous but gregarious, and oblivious to boundaries and rebuffs.
For onlookers (some audience members are actually seated onstage, right in the thick of it), the experience is not unlike watching a wildlife video, one populated by humans. Who poses the most immediate threat? we can’t help wondering. Which resident is the most vulnerable?
The script takes turns you will not see coming. The miracle is that, within these tight quarters, the human impulse to help, to reach out, does find room to flower. And if the play itself foments discussion, concern, and action, it will have fulfilled its mission.
Love opened February 28, 2023, at the Park Avenue Armory and runs through March 25. Tickets and information: armoryonpark.org
