The bio for playwright Renae Simone Jarrett in the Daphne program is brief, mentioning no previous plays but including a reference to her MacDowell/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. It also specifies that she “is a playwright exploring surreal transformations and the beautiful complexity of language.”
Press information on the production, directed by Sarah Hughes, further states, “Daphne (Jasmine Batchelor) has left the city to live with her girlfriend Winona (Keilly McQuail) in the woods, and things in the house are beginning to sour. As the days slip through her fingers and a series of unsettling incidents make her question the boundaries of her reality, a strange transformation takes hold of Daphne’s body.” It goes on to say, “Daphne is a surreal and moving new work about the stories we tell ourselves, and the moments we’re forced to choose between difficult truths and comfortable illusions.”
The program cover illustration is a woman’s hand and forearm with a tree branch superimposed on it. The yellowish-green drawing is meant to recall the mythological Daphne, who’s transformed into a laurel tree when Mother Earth saves her from hotly pursuing Apollo, the god of sun and music, also known as Phoebus.
All the above background material is included here because it apparently sheds light on a work about which I can explain precious little. Yes, I can describe what happens during the 82 minutes it takes to unravel. This modern-day Daphne and lover Winona are clearly in head-over-heels with each other, although they often bicker while puttering around the house doing things like putting the kettle on or thinking about having a meal at home or going out for pizza.
At one early point, Winona slams a door shut, injuring a finger on Daphne’s left hand, the recovering wound producing not a scar but bark. In time friends drop by. First there’s Piper (Jeena Yi), a mother whose swaddled infant is produced from within a cabinet adjacent to the stove. Next comes Wendy (Naomi Lorrain) in a voluminous coat of colorful, large circles (Oana Botez the costumer), although she’s not cheerfully welcomed by Winona. Last is neighbor and suspected witch Stranger (Denise Burse), who eventually wraps herself in the departed baby’s swaddling blanket and disappears — for a while, anyway.
During the various discourses, talk of a bird called Phoebus (see above reference to Apollo) is carried on. Phoebus is never seen. He’s hidden in a suit-carrier-like sheet hanging on a back wall of set designer Maruti Evans’ elegant house. It’s the far-flung domicile Winona has chosen among myriad trees that nature-loving Daphne is evidently doomed to join. By the way, whether the occasionally screeching Phoebus even exists is eventually in question.
OK, I’m told Jarrett is exploring surreal transformation, which today’s Daphne obviously represents, but isn’t surrealism in a work of art intended as a link to reality? Isn’t Daphne’s becoming a tree — a laurel tree or whatever — supposed to indicate she’s losing herself? If so, much more than the playwright’s obscure rhetorical exchanges are required. Sure, “the beauty of complex language” is a beguiling interest for any dramatist, but the language mustn’t be so complex that it entirely loses accessibly substantial meaning. Daphne’s change is a metaphor, isn’t it, but a metaphor for what exactly?
I was at such a loss with Daphne that I tried to convince myself there was something I was missing others were getting. It’s often suggested that while men are linear thinkers, women are not. I wondered if that explained my falling short of understanding Jarrett’s observation of in-extremis women. Yet, the list of women playwrights I greatly admire is too long to support that theory. I reached the same conclusion about not responding as a male to a drama about lesbian lovers. What of Jarrett’s attachment to Greek mythology? Was I failing on that score? Now I realized I was stretching.
OK, so “Daphne is a surreal and moving new work about the stories we tell ourselves, and the moments we’re forced to choose between difficult truths and comfortable illusion.” I regret to say that nowhere in the play are those stories and moments manifest. Jarrett may think they are, but they’re hardly explicit. They ought to be if audiences are going to relate to Daphne’s dilemma and Winona’s testy behavior.
Incidentally, early in the chat, tree bark ice cream — tree bark ice cream — comes up, which does make for intriguing foreshadowing of Daphne’s fate. Anyway, as an ice cream fanatic, I’d like to know where I can obtain a pint. I might try my local Oddfellows ice cream parlor, where no end of exotic flavors are featured.
Daphne opened October 23, 2023, at the Claire Tow Theater and runs through November 19. Tickets and information: lct.org
