1 commentAddison — Second Thought Theatre closes its season with a twisty two actor one-act that uses the past to change the present. Dying City, directed by Lee Trull, is about as cheery as the title suggests: A widow mourning the loss of her husband finds his identical twin on her doorstep. Discomfort ensues.
When Peter, the twin brother of Kelly’s husband Craig, appears, it is unwelcome. Playwright Christopher Shinn uses his arrival to bring the memory of her husband onstage in more ways than one. This creates difficult staging with repetitive reasons required for one to exit so that the other can enter and vice versa. It’s more flash-baggage that flash-backs, explaining and expositing along the way.
You see, Peter’s the gay actor brother going to star in a movie. Craig’s the hero soldier brother going to fight in Iraq. Peter looks up to him as much as he is looked after by him. A year after his death, Peter comes looking to connect with his wife.
Finding out just why it’s as awkward as it is takes most of the play. Playwright Shinn doesn’t care to fill in the bubble completely on his Scantron survey of modern life. The dialogue is rife with raveled ends. It’s like being invited to someone else’s dysfunctional family reunion. The niceties are effortful because of all the history hanging over their heads. The characters run out of words and into silences frequently. Law and Order, September 11 and Iraq are dodged and hidden behind, sometimes as obstacle and sometimes shelter. It’s difficult to watch and compelling at the same time. Part of the point is that people aren’t able to communicate their suffering.
A couch sitting in a circle surrounded by a cloud of scrim-backed blackness is a default setting for many a modern play. However, this one, designed by Leah Spillman, is dominated by a shipping pallet chandelier. With rough planks bird-nesting out at angles and designer bare bulbs down in dangles, it speaks of the insouciance born of urbanity, a practiced ability to accept accident as intention and in so doing to will ugly away. It could serve as symbol for the plank in the characters’ eyes. Or judging by the water bottle that served as a tea kettle, the producers’.
Rhett Henckel plays both Craig, the soldier, and Peter, the self-involved actor. He is more convincing as the latter, but kudos are in order for creating two characters believable different though genetically the same. Grace Heid plays the widow, Kelly, with perpetual patience born of being a therapist. Late in the play it explodes in furious—if impotent—fists.
Heid and Henckel are arriving and returning here respectively. They are not typical local talent and the effect on the play is palpable. Both brave the syncopated silences with confidence. Understandably director Trull leaves the reigns loose on this team. But the resulting wandering hurts the intended wondering. The end doesn’t come early as much as empty. There are fewer pieces than places in this puzzle. Though that may be a part of playwright Shinn’s point, Trull grows the gaps, making more of a hole than a whole.
Like the chandelier, it could be about ignoring mess to our detriment. Or it could be about seeing it all as a mess. In either case, it is hard to look away. 
