It’s often said that the quintessential 20th-century American play focuses on the dysfunctional family – with, some would assert, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night the foremost example. If so, there’s a sizable subcategory: the dysfunctional-non-family group. A recent example is Bruce Norris’ Downstate, which takes place in an Illinois halfway house for pedophiles and has just been voted the season’s best play by the New York Drama Critics Circle.
This week’s category entry is The Fears, Emma Sheanshang’s dysfunctional-non-family drama that could also be considered a comedy. At least in the earlier segments it could be. Note that it isn’t exactly a dramedy because it doesn’t quite blend the comedy and drama but presents them in that order.
The action – there’s plenty of it, although not at first – takes place at a New York City Buddhist center where seven characters seeking peace meet regularly in hopes that self-help requiring others helping will evolve. They’re known as support groups, aren’t they?
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
NYC as the locale is underscored by sound designer Jane Shaw airing all sorts of noises, including anonymous New Yorkers swearing to beat the band, just outside the one window that set designer Jo Winiarski has allowed in her skillfully impersonal office representation.
The meeting is presided over by Maia (Maddie Corman), whose internalized Buddhist teaching appears quite advanced, quite authoritative. It better be, because this is a play and any promise of abiding calm is likely to go unfulfilled.
Covering several meetings during its 90 minutes, the first one has Thea (Kerry Bishé) arriving for an initial visit. She’s unsure how to behave in the unfamiliar surroundings, especially as she has a secret about her being there that won’t be spoiler alerted here. The others, showing up in due course, are proudly effeminate Fiz (Mehran Khaghani), unhappy wife and mother Rosa (Natalie Woolams-Torres), disturbed late adolescent Katie (Jess Gabor), 41-year-old wannabe actor Mark (Carl Hendrick Louis), and the older Suzanne (Robyn Peterson), who has a habit of arriving with an offbeat snack like Himalayan cashews or crispy seaweed.
Presented with this theatrical circumstance, theatergoers worth their salt (or crispy seaweed) know that little time will go by before the placid atmosphere, controlled by Maia ritually sounding a dulcet gong, will be upset – not once but many times over. And all of it transpiring under a reproduction of Buddha on the back wall, which lighting designer Jeff Croiter regularly spots to emphasize the historic figure’s prominence.
During revelation after revelation, long harbored secrets surface and formerly muted rivalries ignite. These are, of course, the staples of just about every dysfunctional-non-family group work ever written, and while the details of The Fears are distinct, they aren’t sufficiently eye-opening – not to say mind-blowing — to render Sheanshang’s version much more than mildly intriguing.
Many of the confessional interludes are invoked by an exercise called a “Touch In.” The speaker reports on what kind of week he or she has had. Most of them, perhaps needless to say, are hugely disturbing. By final fadeout, what Sheanshang has actually written is an overboard study of seven figures deeply involved in self-pity. “Wallowing” wouldn’t be an unfair word to describe their behavior, which hardly makes for a consistently riveting audience experience.
Hold it. The final revelation, which (spoiler alert here) comes from a suddenly and unexpectedly disturbed Maia, may well get patrons flashing on severely troubled famous groups from the past — groups like, say, the Branch Davidians or the Jamestown population.
Primarily, though, the percolating scenes are strongest on offering opportunities for the actors to show their hot stuff, as commandeered by director Dan Algrant. Among them, Corman moves fluidly through Maia’s not-so-Buddhist-integrated solemnity and grace. Woolams-Torres’ mounting conflicts over Rosa managing her home life becomes increasingly touching. Gabor deals with Katie’s overwrought youth condition with delicacy and intimacy. In other words, Sheanshang’s foremost contributions may be offering shrewd actors extended moments to shine.
There’s another drawback to the work: the Buddhist center. No doubt Sheanshang has her reasons for choosing the locale, but during the earlier sequences, it looks as if her intention is to spoof Buddhist practice. Spectators may even get to suspecting that the playwright herself had given Buddhism a whirl but found it not only unrewarding but downright ripe for satire. For the first while, it feels as if she’s indulging in a cheesy joke. Patrons, surely Buddhists in their number, may not be especially amused.
Yet, as she continues her scrutiny, as she stops going for laughs and gets more deliberately serious, it becomes increasingly clear she’s after some quite different goal. By then, it seems as if she might have been better off imagining a fictitious religious center. Had she done that, of course, she wouldn’t have benefitted from the consistent plus of designer Winiarski’s Buddha on the wall where he can smile beatifically, perhaps thinking, “This too will pass.”
The Fears opened May 18, 2023, at Signature Center and runs through July 9. Tickets and information: telecharge.com
