Shanley's "The Pushover" gives us love, loathing and masterful language

There’s a moment in John Patrick Shanley’s new play “The Pushover,” premiering at the Chain Theatre, when Evelyn, played by Rebecca De Mornay, tells Pearl, played by Di Zhu, that Soochi,  played by Christina Toth, is now nothing to worry about. Soochi  once stole “from” Pearl. Things have changed. Now she’s going to steal “for” her.

The point is, she hasn’t changed, but she’s going to go from being a threat to an asset. Human beings don’t change: What changes is who thieves steal from. Of course, if someone is a thief, it’s probably not wise to engage in any transactions with them. And what follows is proof of that point. If you  think someone is stealing from someone else, it’s only a matter of time before they get around to stealing from you. And that is what happens in the all female love triangle that is at the heart of Shanley’s latest play.

While John Patrick Shanley has given us parables, such as “Doubt…,” two-handers such as “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” and fairy tales such as “Moonstruck,” “The Pushover” is close to a cinema noir or crime story told with Shanley’s brand of story telling. A drama or black comedy, “The Pushover” mulls good and bad, love and loss, and how people use and abuse each other. And it does it in a world of women where the only man is a therapist and a waiter or at least employee carrying a tray. In the arid setting of a desert and then in Queens, we see how  revenge drives people to the edge. And we watch them try to return.

“The Pushover,” though, isn’t just a new play, but something more. It's the latest play by one of the nation’s best known playwrights. Any new Shanley play is an event, and that’s the case with this script and production, which bears many hallmarks of Shanley as a playwright. There is a religious element, if not so much institutional religion. The play is framed by visits to a therapist, played by Christopher Sutton. Zhu's Pearl says she's not sure why he was recommended and doesn't believe he's a match, which he isn't. But he is someone to tell her story to and Sutton provides a nice voice of reason to Zhu's exhausted, pained passion. Her visit to him feels a bit like a confession to a priest where the goal is to find forgiveness, even if self-forgiveness, as much as understanding. The therapist is an audience within a theater where there is an audience. We hear about good and evil, how the two mix and how money and circumstances can impact that.

The Chain Theatre production of “The Pushover,” directed by Kirk Gostkowski, is, to put it simply, about three women falling in and out of love, hurt and hate. And each scene is like a round in a boxing match, where the characters stalk each other. It starts as we see a woman wearing white gloves (the gloves do come off, if it's not exactly for boxing) tell a therapist she has to  come to terms with what she has done. The therapist asks why she is wearing white gloves. Is she trying to sanitize herself, wash blood from her hands, we might wonder, like Lady Macbeth shouting, "Out, damn spot." She tells us she thinks there’s something sexy about white gloves. And we will see those gloves later in the story. But there may be spiritual reasons. It’s as if people in this play are seeking catharsis. White gloves give them distance from their worst deeds. Those white gloves are an ominous symbol of a person who seeks to remain clean, even if she may engage in an occasional dirty deed.

And in the play we see what happened, white gloves and all, leading up to this visit to a therapist, not as a flasback but as we witness, presumably, what Pearl tells her therapist. Lives will be threatened, crimes alleged and guns will go off, but unlike a police procedural, it will be psychological as well as physical things going on. It will be decisions made, revenge sought and the complications that compassion and affection cause. Love thy neighbor? All right. But if you love your enemy, expect some trouble. John Patrick Shanley isn’t so interested in the crimes and consequences, not so much the money as the motivations and the psychology, agony, anger, love and loss. It’s the psychology more than the pathology, the character more than the crime, and a desire for forgiveness and freedom.

"I have a wekaness for strength," Zhu's Pearl says to Sutton’s rumpled therapist, who is largely an observer and listener.

"The Pushover," really, is a play about three women and one love triangle. We hear at one point the question as to who is the one being played. “If one of us loves and the other doesn’t, who’s the fool?” Pearl asks. Does love make us into fools, or just feel like that now and then? We see a merry go round that always has the possibilty, if not the reality, of murder close by. We find out that a woman has stolen from another woman’s former lover - and must pay. That first woman has sent the thief for what appears to be a vacation at a spa. In fact, it’s to face vengeance where the heat of the spa is more like what you might find in hell. But wreaking vengeance would put the ex lover as well at risk. She comes up with her own means of seeking revenge. And we watch the repercussions.

“You act good, but…” De Mornay as Evelyn says to Zhu as Pearl

“Isn’t that what you like?”  Pearl replies. “Little Miss Goody Goody.”

In reality, I believe it’s a play about three women each seeking salvation. De

Mornay as Evelyn or “Ev” says she is a bad person, dangerous and willing to do things she shouldn’t. Does she do these to defend others? And does that make it better? Or is she just saying that to scare other people into doing what’s right? She says she stole money and bought this spa, seeking to launder money and, it seems, cleanse herself. But that couldn’t work, because she now realizes that she was what was dirty or ruined. That desire for peace, absolution and forgiveness, not for legal but ethical trespasses, suffuses the play. Zhu is seeking peace by telling her story, the definition of catharsis in Greek tragedy, and confession in church.

“The Pushover” is extremely well acted. De Mornay is a calculating woman who is attracted to good women, although she realizes that, driven to a point, they must be protected from themselves. She can be as full of fury as a volcano and as soft as a blulebird. She is a powerful woman, although now and then vulnerable. Zhu appears exhausted from the weight of the world, tired of ambivalence and Toth as Soochy simply seems vulnerable, a drug addict whether the drug of choice is a substance, love or money. These are three powerful, but also broken, women, unable to ever be whole. Or at least two. Did Soochy steal to get money for drugs?

The play is smoothly directed by Kirk Gostkowski as if we are watching a movie glide from scene to scene. We see relationships develop, actions dramatize emotions and blocking help create moments. While men in some plays may battle like a boxing match, much of the violence here is against objects as surrogates. De Mornay tears up drawings, crumpling and then stomping on them, exerting violence on objects, if not on one another. A knife is driven into a cutting board, another example of violence against objects. De Mornay marvels at the idea that Soochy can “see” people she draws from imagination. At one point De Mornay as Evelyn threatens Thoth's Soochie, but she will only take action if told to. Pacing and volume adjust as the play refuses to settle into a routine, or does that before rebelling as the volume is turned up. Stillness is a sign of power not indecision or stasis here. Kisses aren’t on the lips, although they might be for more passion, but emotions are high. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but it can excite a lot of hot emotions.

“The Pushover” also offers a masterfully constructed and lit set with scenic design by Jackson Berkley and light and shadows like spokes in a wheel by Dariel Garcia. The set, filled with dialogue which includes cursing as poetic as Mamet’s curses in a male-dominated world, itself is suffused with Asian influence from the spa with its Asian design, minimalistic spaces and screens. We cut from (and the play has a cinematic feel) a stark spa to scenes in a cluttered Chinese restaurant named “Chopsticks” in Queens.

 “Chopsticks,” Evelyn says. “ That’s what I used to call you.”

“Don’t remind me.,” Pearl replies.

“Come on. It was a flirt,” Evelyn says. “You loved it.”

Yes, it’s demeaning, but also affectionate. This fine line between love and loathing is in part what the play, I believe, is about. It is set in a kind of Garden of Eden, in New Mexico, but the snake is there from the start. The spa itself is beautiful and relaxing, including orange robes with power games played out, as De Mornay’s character commands Toth’s. Partitions peel back later as that same space is transformed into a Chinese restaurant, complete with a steaming pot as if that steam is pouring out in sparsms from the depths of hell. It’s a play about people on the run, whether in therapy, in a spa or in a restaurant where a single unopened fortune cookie sits on a table. De Mornay says even amid the greatest heat, as in New Mexico, or hell, she finds a "cool" core.

Good plays have moments and “The Pushover” has a lot of lines that make you stop and think. Suddenly, so much is summed up in so few words. "The Pushover" pushes all the right buttons when it comes to showing us a triangle where love, loathing and longing also collide. It seems like these are girl gangsters, but emotional gangsters. The crimes are stealing from or hurting loved ones – who would never go to the police. De Mornay as Evelyn says she’s a criminal and the woman sent to her is also a criminal. Crime is a common bond. Zhu’s character, it seems, falls for “bad” women. She is the “pushover” who easily falls in love with dangerous women. But as she tells Sutton as the therapist, she gets pushed around until she reaches a point where she strikes back. That’s the snake in Eden. Good people sometimes do the worst things, when they feel wounded, justified and set off.

At certain points comedy and drama collide in “The Pushover.” When we hear about a plan to go to Venezuela to escape, that’s dismissed with logic so simple it’s comical. You can’t really escape. Part of the play is finding out what each human’s sin has been. To me one of the most powerful moments occurs when De Mornay’s character tells us that her great sin was not protecting her mother from her father’s abuse. That is the blood she feels responsible for being shed, not that of someone she may have shot. Not that she shed blood so much, but she didn’t protect. Maybe that's why she wants to protect her former lover so much now, as ig to repent for failing to protect someone else. She has a conscience, hardly something you’d find in an awful person. In fact, she cares, loves and seeks to protect. She would later have to take care of her father, as if that were her punishment. Did she ever shed anyone else’s  blood? Or did she just decide she was a bad person, because  of one fatal failure? Did she say she was bad, to get other people to be good?

“The Pushover” is not a realistic play, but then theater doesn’t need to be realistic. It doesn’t show us people who we could meet on the street. It is, though, theatrical, beautifully written and a kind of scavenger hunt littered with insight, realistic writing, wit, wisdom and a trip through an emotional mine field. It mixes shades of Greek drama and catharsis with dark comedy. The play starts when we find out that one woman has sent her current lover, who has stolen from her, to her own ex lover, who she hopes will kill her. What follows is a dangerous, but hardly realistic, dance. The ex lover, though, decides to put that woman to work, letting her steal to get the money to pay back the ex lover from whom she stole. It's really about betrayal, more than bucks. When we end up seeing the woman back in therapy, we believe, or at least I did, that her greatest sin was falling in love with people who would hurt her. Maybe she wanted to be hurt.

Characters in “The Pushover” portray themselves as good or evil in a Manichean universe, a black and white world, but of course people typically are a mix of both. The world is often more  gray than black and white. The good character is the one who seeks to call in her former lover to commit the  worst crime. She has a moment when she wants revenge, but instead she gets a second chance. The play brings all three women together in a showdown in a Chinese restaurant, although we hear restaurants described as “Asian fusion” at first.

“Good and bad and evil and strong and weak and who gives a flying fuck?” Pearl says. “Look at me. You’re everything. I’m everything.”

“The Pushover” lets us watch a play not seeking to pretend to be reality in front of us with the roof ripped off, but characters navigating a series of events and challenges amid heightened emotions. We watch three women battle it out. But in this boxing match, drawings are torn, objects are tossed and knives are pulled. It’s about what happens when you’re betrayed by someone you love, even if’s because they give in to the temptation to take cash. Yes, they take money, but also our security. In “The Pushover,” women try to heal after being hurt. They do it by taking revenge, but as we see at the start and end, they also do it by talking, to a therapist or a kind of priest in civilian clothes. We can say things to strangers we can't say to those we love. In the end, I suppose, we learn to heal by accepting that we and others are human. “You’re everything,” we’re told. “I’m everything.” We will be hurt. That’s human. But so is healing and that, I suppose, is the most hopeful message or note of John Patrick Shanley’s latest symphony of a play and of life in general.