Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The bizarre new musical THE APPOINTMENT treats its sticky subject matter with ambiguity

• By drediman
• April 29, 2019
• No Comments

The company of Lightning Rod Special’s “The Appointment” at the 4th Street Theatre, courtesy of New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door programming. Photo by Johanna Austin.

This past week, I had an encounter with one of the most bizarre shows I think I’ve ever come across. That would be Lightning Rod Special’s production of The Appointment, one of the programmed spring offerings of New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door series. Based out of Philadelphia, Lightning Rod Special was also responsible for Underground Railroad Game, one of the more successfully provocative shows about race I’ve seen in recent years (the acclaimed production is receiving an encore run this May/June at the Greenwich House Theatre). If The Appointment isn’t as overtly incendiary as that previous show, it’s an equally unsettling sit its own way.

You see, The Appointment is a show about abortion, as told from the perspectives of fetuses, as well as the women who have chosen to get the procedure performed. Oh, and did I mention it’s a musical? Much of the show is performed in a surreal and deadpan manner that elicits quite a number of uncomfortable moments because of their insistent ambiguity. Indeed, the musical, which is also quite funny, intentionally leaves many of the questions it raises left unanswered. Are the singing and dancing fetuses a figment of the women’s imaginations? Is the intent of the show to parody abortion or simply to caution against the procedure? Although we’re likely never to find out, the show triggers more nuanced conversations.

To its credit, The Appointment succeeds in drawing audiences to its still taboo subject matter by employing a theatrical mode of performance most of us are comfortable and familiar with – musical theater. As such, director Eva Steinmetz and her assertive cast have mounted a set of gleefully staged, hallucinatory musical numbers that seethe with life. However, jarringly dispersed throughout are music-less scenes of women visiting a clinic to prepare for the procedure. The show culminates with one of these somber interludes, a near wordless scene of an actual abortion and its immediate aftermath. How fitting that the show would end in silence – neither words nor music are sufficient to articulate what had just happened.

RECOMMENDED

THE APPOINTMENT
Off-Broadway, Musical
A Lightning Rod Special production at the 4th Street Theatre (courtesy of New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door Series)
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through May 4