I saw something, and I'm saying something: The Big Guns

Dying City

by Christopher Shinn
directed by Daniel Gidron
presented by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston

I was really impressed by most of the elements of the Lyric Stage's production of Christopher Shinn's recent off-Broadway show; the lighting, the set, the script. Everything except the performances, which seems like it may dampen the overall experience of a play that employs a two person cast that, for the first half of the show, struggles to rise to the quality of the material. But don't worry, the play succeeds in spite of some of the choices made by the two certainly eager, but uneven actors featured in an otherwise successful showing.

The story opens one evening in Kelly's partially packed-up Manhattan apartment as her dead husband (Craig)'s identical twin brother Peter arrives, unannounced and in a tizzy. If this sounds like a lot, it is. The first ten minutes are somewhat plagued by Shinn's not completely seamless merger of awkward conversation and possibly more awkward exposition. It isn't helped that neither Jennifer Blood, nor Chris Thorn, seem to know what to do with either character at first. As we learn that Blood's Kelly hasn't contacted Craig in the year that has passed since her hubby did, we also learn that Thorn hasn't completely wrapped his head around Peter's motivation (or his sexuality) in this scene. Seemingly overwhelmed by having to play not only a passive aggressive schemer, but a gay passive aggressive schemer, Thorn settled for a physicality that was a little too light in loafers (shall we say) for my liking, and line readings that seemed overeager for someone who hadn't seen his aforementioned, visably delicate, sister-in-law in a year. Jennifer Blood's handling of this scene seems more reasonable at first, but her exasperated delivery and sodden posture soon reads as anemic for the role on which the show's structure pivots. But as soon as the play plunges the audience and actors into its illuminating look into the gray areas in life, everyone fares better.

As Peter leaves the room to take a phone call, we are transported several months back in time, to the night before Kelly's husband Craig is to be deported to Iraq, with a quickly changed and more stoic Thorn re-entering to portray the other brother. Shinn cuts back and forth between these two seemingly unrelated nights, forming a tantalizing triangle of relationships between all three characters.

Thorn scores higher with the manlier of the men, giving Craig a subtle reading that fits for what may be just a memory, and becomes a powerfully evocative cipher for the rest of the play. The show gathers remarkable steam as it continuously ratchets up the stakes, but never allows the audience to fully feel the significance of either scenes until its end. Shinn has written a play that has incredibly skillfully reckoned the elusive "public and personal" to great affect. Although hot button buzz-words like "Abu Ghraib" and talk of whether or not the Iraq War is justified made me cringe at first mention, "Dying City" does not melt into what Suzan Lori-Parks describes as "play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline". The text never treats its characters as mouth-pieces for opinion, and keeps the focus on the emotional narrative of three people grappling with the world and each other. In fact, its Shinn's inclusion of these references and images that may make "City" so affecting. By setting the rough love of Kelly and Craig, the tender, and maybe vicious, brotherhood of Peter and Craig, and the devastating connection of Kelly and Peter afloat in images of towers falling, sexual deviants, and men killing each other in combat, Shinn has the audience questioning what exactly he is trying to examine, relationships or war, and in doing so, makes us reflect on both.

David Gidron's direction lets Shinn's writing take center stage (where it belongs), letting the initial tone dupe the audience into thinking its watching the theatrical equivalent of a John Le Carre novel, before slowly building up to an ending that might only disappoint those looking to leave with tied ends as opposed to, say, thoughts. The only place where Gidron seems to slip up is the tricky transitions between scenes that clutter up an otherwise efficient pace. Scenic Designer Skip Curtiss and Lighting Designer Robert Cordella provide pitch-perfect support to this already strong work. Cordella moves evocative drawing-blind stripes across Curtiss's immaculate Trojan Horse of an entry into the grand tradition of Straight Play Drawing Rooms, which imploded my expectations just as Shinn's writing does. Don't let my initial snub of the performers (or the performers themselves) deter you from seeing "Dying City"; its the kind of show where my first thought after it ended was that I wanted to just stay in my seat, and see it all over again. And maybe this time with a cast that really elevated it to the "run-don't-walk" potential "Dying City" clearly has. You don't have to run for it, but I certainly wouldn't recommend missing it...