It’s time, once again, to take a little trip to a dystopian world that is distressingly familiar and comfortingly strange. You know the literature: Brave New World, 1984, The Hunger Games, The Giver… Sleeper: places dominated by shadowy leaders whose image engenders fear, obedience, and rebellion. Add to the list Returning to Joseph, Satori Group’s world premiere production of a script by Spike Friedman (through May 25).
This touching meditation on love, education, and family through boat analogies and civil strife features strong performances from a pair of actors (a pair and a half, counting the prerecorded eponymous dictator). Despite a lull in the second half, the show is moving and more engaging that most one sees in a Seattle theatre season, but its greatest strength is in the details. Friedman writes with such finesse that, despite vast differences, the world of this play feels closer to our own than most plays set here and now.
The characters we discover in that world include Andrea (LoraBeth Barr) and Leo (Quinn Franzen) who meet at a rebel gathering that gets routed by loyalist forces. Andrea and Leo barely escape and Leo, who is more of a loyalist, saves their lives but suffers serious brain damage. This provides Andrea with an opportunity to rebuild his brain with rebel sympathies, much as the government brainwashes their prisoners (more effective than killing). In the process Andrea and Leo form a deep personal bond that is strained when she leads her new-made rebel home to share her achievement with her comrades.
The tale is shown in flashbacks as Andrea and Leo speak their story, or a version of their story, into a microphone in hopes of gaining access to a rebel-held shelter. They cannot see the people to whom they speak but they look up, as if at a camera, or toward a two-way mirror. We are keenly aware that we are observing, that we have power we won’t use, and that these actors/characters are vulnerable.
As they beg to be let in, to be given shelter, we in our steeply raked gallery of seats, begin to feel that the play wants something from us. We begin to look for a way to let them in, and then suddenly the tables are turned.
At intermission we are all asked to exit and instructed to leave nothing in the theatre. When we return it is to the area that had been the stage. The actors perform on the gallery that had been the house.
There is an idea at work here but the staging is awkward. The gallery is useful in terms of the script’s interest in audiences and performance, but feels wrong as the setting. It serves as a projection surface where we see video of Albert Joseph broken up on those railings, steps, and risers. This does make the leader more shadowy but seems an odd choice for a projection surface in the world of the play.
In the first half the play we watch Andrea and Leo’s relationship take shape. Barr and Quinn have great chemistry and instantly snap back and forth from their shared intimacy in the testimony scenes to the various points of growing trust in the flashbacks. The second half is less compelling, in part, because we are denied that chemistry. Instead we find Andrea alone with that projection for much of her time on stage.
The interrogation that makes up most of the second half is wickedly clever. It proceeds like a therapy session with the subject doing most of the work. The prerecorded therapist/interrogator simply provides prompts. In the world of Albert Joseph that prompting is so powerful that punishment comes in removal of the interrogator: The subject desires the torture.
The hitch is that most of the play’s dramatic action takes place in this second half and the changes don’t seem organically justified. There is little for us to discover, no need we might fulfill. All we can do is wait for Andrea to escape her engrained responses. Though she has enough perspective to see the evil in Albert Joseph’s control she remains swayed by it. When she finally and suddenly breaks she justifies the self-conscious staging of projection on gallery, calling out the performance of power and coming to question most of what she knows.
This revelation, though long in coming, leaves us with questions about our own power and place in society and the world. There’s no brow beating; they are subtle and incisive questions. Finally, Friedman is kind and hopeful enough to leave us not just unsettled but also reassured.
The world of this performance wouldn’t hold together without strong support from the technical team. Marnie Cumings builds on her growing reputation for subtle work in challenging settings. Evan Mosher’s sound design is understated and effective; even if the projector sounds feel symbolic they still do the job.
Costumes, by Doreen Sayegh and Greta Wilson, are a highlight. Both rustic and futuristic, they look like clothes one would want to wear here and now. This does nothing to diminish their efficacy as costumes. We immediately know how these two characters differ from one another by their shoes alone. It is this level of attention to detail that characterizes the entire production making it equally transporting and transforming for its audience.
{The Satori Group’s Returning to Albert Joseph plays at theLAB@Inscape through May 25, tickets can be found here.}
