The cast of "Someone Spectacular. " Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
Some plays defy description. “Someone Spectacular,” Domenica Feraud’s often intense, comic play at the Pershing Square Signature Center, is about a grief group. And that, in part, does tell you what you will see. But when the leader doesn’t show up, we get a story that stretches far beyond the borders and structure of such a group. We meet the group's members, hear about their losses, and follow their lives.
What follows is an often riveting, extremely well acted meditation on grief and a look at very different people trying to come to terms, not just with loss, but with the loss of their leader. We watch them compete, console and communicate in a show that lasts over an hour without intermission, but is filled with insight and important, dramatic and comic moments.
Although “Someone Spectacular” travels a route more like a river than a road, it does move forward. We watch the members worry about their missing leader, speculating whether she is dead, distracted or dealing with something. Not every problem is a tragedy, we are told. Still, their losses provide the backdrop to every disruption as a potential disaster. We watch them wait, worry and then take over, playing games, confessing and connecting, as we wait with them to solve the mystery of the missing leader.
Ironically, the absence of the leader echoes the loss of their loved ones. It’s as if the parents are gone and the children must figure out the world. They are on their own, facing a new loss, and wondering if the worst happened. Along the way, the characters clash, the different people (ethnicity, gender, age, experience) express themselves and experience revelations as they deal with the sense of abandonment that comes from absence.
We watch six people in a set by dots (the scenic designer) that looks a little bit like a boxing ring in the round. Electric outlets provide escapes that, in the end, don’t allow true escape any more than screens do. Director Tatiana Pandiani blocked the show fluidly, moving the actors around, making the most of the theater in the round. The play opens with a long, uncomfortable pause that, for my tastes, simply went on too long, but once the dialogue starts, the long silence is broken with a bang and the boxing match begins as the characters judge and weigh each other’s loss.
We get to know just enough about each person, as well as the “spectacular” person they loved, from a baby to a mother to an aunt and more. The play is equally about love and loss. While it sometimes feels as if it is exploring subject matter, more than story, it reaches out and pulls you back into these people's lives and the stories of how they deal with challenges, absence and the need to move on with what Robert Frost called "miles to go before I sleep." And it's well acted from start to finish.
Ana Cruz Kayne as Lily is tough, brusque and aggressive, glad that Beth, the leader, isn’t there. While rules reassure some, they annoy her. We see the group decide whether someone else should lead. Should they vote? Why have a leader at all? But if the cast is the jury, Kayne as Lily comes across as the forewoman, standing while others sit. Gamze Ceylan as Evelyn is calmer, a peace maker, while Alison Cimmet as Nelle paces, trapped. Delia Cunningham as Jude, who lost a child, seems like a lost child herself, full of fear, afraid her husband will reject her because she isn’t getting over the loss.
Damian Young as Thom talks about having been an “innocent idiot,” as if a death truly deprives us of our Eden. He was too busy to get together with his wife before it was too late. He has begun dating, but refuses to be judged, even as he acknowledges he is. Shakur Tolliver as Julian seeks to justify his strong feelings for an aunt who sounds like a surrogate mother. His silence speaks volumes. And he as well as the rest of the cast bring an impressive intensity which, as counterpoint to the comedy, makes this a cathartic show.
“Someone Spectacular” is littered or lined with insights about letting go and not letting go, moving forward, if not moving on, but does not fall into the sand trap of platitudes. We hear about the hierarchy of loss and how we only appreciate what we have when it’s gone, but in words that feel fresh rather than believe they belong on a bumper sticker. These insights feel personal, born from experience rather than an educational textbook, and come from the character. We get a window into personal grief, while also taking an opportunity to revisit our own, giving this play an added aspect of realism. We watch their losses, while painfully aware of our own.
The plot does progress, although there probably could be more focus on the missing person, dismissed fairly easily, and a recognition of how this absence mirrors and brings out their loss. Death is endless absence for survivors. I suppose that initial silence is meant to remind us of that emptiness. Still, there might have been more talk about people telling them to “get over” it, although there is some. And there are no real relationships between the members, beyond the fact that they have been thrown together by a losing ticket in life’s lottery. The show does look at how society makes us justify our sorrow, while others want us to move on with life. Great loss never leaves you, although great pain may, an important distinction. It might be interesting to see these people at different stages of loss, although we hear about different times since the loss. All share the same sense of a refusal to let go, while more variety in how to manage loss might further deepen an already emotional show.
To say I enjoyed “Someone Spectacular” would be true, although it is a play about loss, which is not a lot of fun. You can’t have loss without love, as we’re reminded. Someone who mourns a mother who loved them at least had a mother who loved them. The lack of a true pivotal plot, in the end, leads to a play that stops rather than ends, but then life is like that, I suppose. We have a flashback, as if the playwright is testing out this device, which might work if it is more integrated into the play. And then there is a persistent beep, as if it’s a surreal medical, clinical sound these people, now in heaven, hear in their inner ear, their loved one’s last moments haunting them. There is a stab at a sudden ending, but even then rather than hearing the heart, it might have been about hearing a flatlining before the heart resumes. The play ends, without truly finishing. Nevertheless, in theater, as in trips and life, it is the journey that counts most.
The members pack up and are about to leave just before the end, as they enter life, which awaits them outside this funereal room, a temporary tomb and room where it is safe to feel sorry, but then they all sit back down. It's as if the playwright refused, and couldn't, let the characters leave, which is letting go. It might have been more moving, I believe, if some or all really left as they returned to life. We’re told that you’re never alone, which is true. Still, death leaves us with a sense of being left behind with the lingering loneliness of loss. The one who mourns is the lucky one, of course, although he or she must live with the loss. Greek amphitheaters were about catharsis in shows played out beneath the sky. Shakespeare's Globe also was an outdoor theater, although many may forget that. This production, done in a set surrounded by white as if held up by heaven’s clouds, does feel a little bit as if it plays out in a heavenly after life. But we realize we are the ones who have a chance to find heaven on earth or, maybe, already have it even if we’re not aware or often forget.
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