If you think Pirandello is a brand of Italian sparkling water, then probably Six Characters is not a play for you.
Probably even viewers familiar with Luigi Pirandello’s meta-theatric dramas of illusion from a century ago are likely to be flummoxed by the intellectual and dramaturgical chaos that erupts sporadically during Six Characters.
An excessive, extremely demanding — and not especially rewarding — new play composed by Phillip Howze, Six Characters premiered on Monday in a production by Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 division, which stages new works by promising new playwrights.
In spite of its title, Howze does not deliver a fresh version of the Nobel Prize-winning writer’s classic Six Characters in Search of an Author. Instead, Howze uses Pirandello’s plastic is-this-real-or-part-of-the-
Let’s describe some of Howze’s deliberately disorderly two-act work.
Alone on the “bare” stage of the Claire Tow Theater, a rather grand gent who self identifies as the Director (Julian Robertson) is seen trying to grasp at something beyond his reach. Then an assertive lady named Sassy (Claudia Logan) emerges from the audience, declaring she has been invited to participate in the show. Soon Sassy dismisses entirely the function of a director (“You ain’t nobody”) and temporarily incapacitates the guy who collapses into a daze, pitifully moaning smatterings of Italian.
Four others arrive: An older woman who cleans the building (Seret Scott); a regular Joe doing cosplay dressed as a cop (Will Cobbs); and a cute youngster of flexible gender who later is known as Newman (CG). The author notes in his script that all of the play’s characters are depicted as Black people.
The final arrival is a beautiful young woman who emerges from a trash bin to announce with total sincerity, “I am a slave.” Learning she is inside a theater, she wonders, “Is this a place of freedom?” This obviously magical creature named Road (Seven F.B. Duncombe) is soon happily educating herself by quantum leaps. Can you guess what rising American demographic she may represent?
No doubt what happens between these characters is meant to be provocative. But the line between experimental and incomprehensible artistry can be thin, and Six Characters crosses it frequently both as a play and as a busy production.
An enormous crate labelled “Old Shit” is introduced to yield period costume pieces and props salvaged from a score of actual Lincoln Center Theater and Metropolitan Opera productions. Donning and playing with such gallimaufry of yesteryear, the characters casually proffer sly, snide observations about life in the theater, dropping self-aware remarks like, “What else can you do, aside from being angry inside a system you’ve chosen to participate in?”
Later, a litany of a writer’s interior anxieties about the racial and social conflicts within the arts world today (“Your work is not accessible if it doesn’t include a white proxy …”) is drowned in the cascading voices of their concerted rendition by the company.
Another passage, strikingly lighted for sinister atmosphere by designer Masha Tsimring, sees the characters read out Aristotle’s political theories on slavery. Whether their subsequent calls for Aristotle’s cancellation are meant to be in earnest or as ironic commentary is not clear.
These are just a few occurrences during the play’s first act, which concludes as the Director declaims in perfect Italian a lengthy, increasingly frenzied imitation of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini speaking furiously to a cheering crowd.
Magnified by Christopher Darbassie’s resonant sound design, this bizarre sequence strains to link theater practice, both political and creative, to fascism to white nationalism to poor old Pirandello and somehow to all of the symbols that clang through Six Characters like fire engines racing to a five alarm disaster.
The second act by contrast is considerably quieter and the work ends with a vague hope for a new sort of theater in the future. It is obvious that the playwright has studied theater history diligently and wants to express many significant thoughts about the awful heritage he decries, but the onstage results prove ambivalent, inconclusive and wearying to experience.
Heightened yet seemingly natural performances by the ensemble under Dustin Wills’ direction help to hold together the patchy drama’s loose ends. Among Wills’ six capable players, Claudia Logan is a driving force of nature as the irrepressible Sassy and the veteran artist Seret Scott is always a warm, humorous presence. Julian Robertson ably rolls along with the punches that smack his beseiged Director.
Vintage recordings of Black opera divas singing glorious arias are played before the show, during intermission and afterward. They are lovely to hear, of course, but is the music meant to be satirical of the grandiloquent white theater that the playwright denounces? That’s just one more mystery lurking amid many murky intents and motives in the ambitious and ultimately frustrating Six Characters.
Six Characters opened July 29, 2024, at the Claire Tow Theater and runs through August 25. Tickets and information: lct.org
