Luigi Pirandello, the Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright who wrote “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” was for a time a member of the National Fascist Party and a follower of Benito Mussolini. This may, or may not, help explain why Act I of “Six Characters” — Phillip Howze’s abstruse new play — ends with Character 1, aka The Director (Julian Robertson), reciting a very long speech by Mussolini, in Italian.
“Six Characters” is full of such possible clues to its possible meaning(s). These are moments that reveal the playwright’s erudition about the theater, and suggest he’s establishing an extended metaphor connecting the power imbalance in the theater with that in society, past and present. (The Director tells us that the job of director didn’t even exist in the theater until shortly before Mussolini came to power in Italy) Some of these moments are striking, even clever. At one point, the Director defines devised theater as “when a director works with a bunch of people and steals their ideas then puts their own name on it sort of separately, in a much larger size than everyone else’s. It’s fun.”
But such cleverness is only intermittently discernible on a surface full of deliberate longueurs. (Did we really need to hear all of that Italian?) Much of the audience will be uncertain what’s going on in “Six Characters” much of the time; many will surely be too impatient to try to figure it out.
The uncertainty starts before the audience enters the theater, when the usher offers us a yellow wristband to wear, but won’t explain what it’s for, saying they don’t know.
When the play begins, the Director (in the program identified only as Character 1) is on the empty stage by himself, trying various ladders to fix something on the ceiling, when Character 1 (eventually identified on stage as Sassy) wearing one of the yellow wristbands, as if an audience member being proactive about participating. They argue, wind up scuffling, Sassy takes out a knife, the Director grabs at it, accidentally cutting himself. Just then, Character 3, aka Maid, comes on stage to clean, and the Director asks her for help, then calls for security, and gets Character 4, aka Police. We soon meet 5/Newman, then 6/Road, who is apparently a time-traveling slave. In the next scene, the Director is tied up and gagged – with a pile of those yellow wristbands.
Eventually the characters come upon a huge wooden box labeled “Old Shit,” full of props and costumes from previous productions, and they play around with them; bandy about the different definitions of “play” (“Verb. To participate in.” “Noun. A dramatic work.”) read aloud from Aristotle’s Poetics. There is one exchange that makes it clear the all-Black cast was not just a director’s choice, but the playwright’s too, when the characters tell us that they’re in “a likeable comedy Comedies are how you sell tickets these days. And Blackness is a trending topic. Blackness with a twist. Don’t upset the white people
We must include them in the conversation, right? Inclusion. Right? Right.”
Act II offers three two-character scenes. Sassy and Police are on a break, standing in a hallway that is a precise reproduction of the hallway at Lincoln Center Theater, complete with posters for old Lincoln Center plays. They discuss their relationship, which is now mostly in the past and bittersweet. The scene is haunted by a spectral presence.
Road and Newman are in a dimly lit box – I think this is the Old Shit Box – chatting amiably until Road pulls a gun on Newman while they play gin rummy. Newman wants thing to turn romantic, and proposes; Road laughs, seeing marriage as a different kind of slavery, dictatorship.
There is a scene between the Director and Maid, that brings us somewhat back to the beginning, but full of longing and regret.
I’m not sure whether I’ve done justice to these scenes or, conversely, told you too much. For what it’s worth, the cast is game, and the design is meticulous — right down to those yellow wristbands.
Six Characters
Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater through August 25
Running time: 2 hours and 10 minutes, including one intermission
Tickets: $33
Written by Phillip Howze
Directed by Dustin Wills
Sets by Dustin Wills, costumes by Montana Levi Blanco, lighting by Masha Tsimring, and sound by Christopher Darbassie.
Cast: CG as 5/Newman, Will Cobbs as 4/Police, Seven F. B. Duncombe as 6/Road, Claudia Logan as 2/Sassy, Julian Robertson as 1/Director, and Seret Scott as 3/Maid.
Related
Read More
