Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Exploring Identity through Theater (and the Internet): Daniel Alexander Jones’s DUAT and Jenny Rachel Weiner’s KINGDOM COME

• By drediman
• November 7, 2016
• No Comments

This past weekend, I took in two new though-provoking Off-Broadway plays that had me contemplating the very notion of identity. Does gender and sexuality hold claim to it? Does even death? What is the relationship between identity and beauty?

Daniel Alexander Jones and Jacques Gerard Colimon in Soho Rep.’s “Duat” at the Connelly Theater

First up is Daniel Alexander Jones’s Duat (RECOMMENDED), which was given a thoughtful and deeply personal production by the now-itinerant Soho Rep. (the production unfortunately just closed yesterday at the Connelly Theater). Mr. Jones’s play, a dreamlike autobiographical excavation into the playwright’s identity, is a not an easy one. It’s an elliptical play, which also stars Mr. Jones as an iteration of himself (he’s represented at various stages in his life), that often associates amateur aesthetics with theatrical sophistication, occasionally to head-scratching results. But there’s a homespun and spontaneous quality to director Will Davis’s production that ultimately left me disarmed and moved by the idea that every moment is an opportunity to rethink oneself.

Carmen Herlihy and Alex Hernandez in Roundabout’s “Kingdom Come” at the Black Box Theatre

Jenny Rachel Weiner’s Kingdom Come (RECOMMENDED), courtesy of Roundabout Theatre Company and playing in the intimate Black Box Theatre, is a much more conventional play. The piece explores the idea of creating a persona on the Internet that’s closer in proximity with who one truly identify with than one’s “reality”, particularly in a world with severe standards for beauty – and all its implications for living. The cast and production (directed with compact fluidity by Kip Fagan) are both a joy to behold. It’s the play itself, however, that somewhat lets the production down. I was deeply involved throughout much of the play, but unfortunately the last ten minutes felt contrived; I just wish Ms. Weiner had dug deeper into the ideas it had so enticingly laid out (no spoilers here).

DUAT
Off-Broadway, Play (with music)
Soho Rep. at the Connelly Theater
2 hours, 10 minutes (with one intermission)
Closed

KINGDOM COME
Off-Broadway, Play
Roundabout Theatre Company at the Black Box Theatre
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 18