Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Playwriting in the first person: Dan O’Brien’s THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN and Clare Barron’s I’LL NEVER LOVE AGAIN

• By drediman
• March 8, 2016
• No Comments

One of the prevailing tips given to writers of fiction is to “write what you know”. This winter, I came across two new plays that took this piece of advice a step further. These two plays, Dan O’Brien’s The Body of an American and Clare Barron’s I’ll Never Love Again, both feature the playwrights themselves as the main protagonists in their respective works. However, unlike the self-congratulatory theatrical memoirs out there (e.g., recent productions Maurice Hines’ Tappin’ Thru Life and Jim Dale’s Just Jim Dale come to mind), these two works strike me more as wrenching self-exorcisms than valedictory career retrospectives.

Dan O’Brien’s hallucinatory two-hander The Body of an American (RECOMMENDED), which is currently enjoying a run at the Cherry Lane Theatre courtesy of Primary Stages, is a play about ghosts – both literally and figuratively. The autobiographical play, which is based on the true story of the playwright’s relationship with war reporter and photographer Paul Watson, is at its core a story about two lost souls who find salvation through their friendship. Mr. Watson is haunted by a menacing voice in his head whom he believes to be the ghost of one of the American corpses he photographed abroad. Our playwright, too, is haunted by demons of his own (depicted as a looming, suffocating depression) as he struggles to finish the play we are seeing. The end product is a “theatrical diary” of sorts that brings, if not complete catharsis, at least some momentary peace for these two troubled souls. Primary Stages’ production, sensitively directed (Jo Bonney) and designed (particularly the sets by Richard Hoover, projections by Alex Basco Koch, sound by Darron L. West, and lighting by Lap Chi Chu), is excellent. Michael Crane and Michael Cumpsty as Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Watson, respectively, are both in superb form, ably handling the scripts labyrinthine structure.

I was left awestruck by Clare Barron’s You Got Older, one of the very best plays of last season. I thought then that Ms. Barron possessed one of the most piercingly direct, uniquely lyrical new voices I had come across in a while. I was therefore determined to trudge all the way to Bushwick to catch her latest, I’ll Never Love Again (RECOMMENDED). In the play, Ms. Barron uninhibitedly conjures feelings of her first love and sexual awakening, uncensored. In this fantasia-like explosion of a play, you get it all: from naïve giddiness, to messy, graphic sex. While watching the play, I got the sense that Ms. Barron – who bravely also appears in the play, explicitly re-enacting one of her first sexual encounters – was deeply affected and haunted (perhaps unconsciously) by this period in her life. By exploring and, in a way, celebrating what came before, the author has objectified and therefore distanced herself from the girl she used to be. The Bushwick Starr production, effectively directed by Michael Leibenluft, is impressively polished and filled with skilled, endearing performances. Lastly, Stephanie Johnstone’s music and musical supervision lift the show to ecstasy whenever Ms. Barron’s prismatic script calls for it.

THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN
Off-Broadway, Play
Primary Stages at Cherry Lane Theatre
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 20

I’LL NEVER LOVE AGAIN
Off-Broadway, Play
The Bushwick Starr
1 hour, 15 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 19