Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Helen Banner’s INTELLIGENCE & Jessie Dickey’s THE CONVENT: Two forceful, uneven plays about women taking charge of their lives, at a price

• By drediman
• January 29, 2019
• No Comments

This past weekend, I caught two new Off-Broadway plays about women forcefully taking charge of their lives, often times at a painful price. These plays strike me as thematic progressions from Ibsen’s trailblazing A Doll’s House. That is, it addresses the question of what happens when the proverbial Nora slams the door and moves on with her life. It’s only taken us more than a century years to get to this point.

Amelia Pedlow, Rachel Pickup, and Kaliswa Brewster in NYTW Next Door’s production of “Intelligence” by Helen Banner. Photo by Hunter Canning.

First up was NYTW’s Next Door mounting of Intelligence (RECOMMENDED) by Helen Banner, which has been running at the 4^thStreet Theatre since mid-January. Set in Washington, DC, the political thriller involves three women: a senior diplomat for the Department of State and her two smart and motivated minions. Trapped in the bowels of a generic government building for two weeks, the three women are tasked to collaborate on a high-stakes foreign affairs assignment – vaguely specified, intentionally – that take each to emotional extremities. Although the play is largely improbable (e.g., role playing takes on a central role in developing their strategy), Ms. Banner has a natural knack for writing crackling dialogue that kept me hooked over the production’s sharply-directed (thanks to Jess Chayes) 90-minutes. The production also features a superb trio of actresses – Rachel Pickup, Amelia Pedlow, and Kaliswa Brewster – who act the hell out of the script.

Amy Berryman, Samantha Soule, and Wendy vanden Heuvel in Rattlestick Playwrights Theater’s production of “The Convent” by Jessie Dickey. Photo by Ahron R. Foster.

Immediately afterwards at the Mezzanine Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres, I caught Jessie Dickey’s The Convent (RECOMMENDED), courtesy of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. The play tells the story of a group of women who, for one reason or another, yearn to turn their lives around. The retreat they attend to jumpstart this reclamation involves living like a combination of Medieval nuns and free-loving hipsters at a remote mountaintop convent. As with Intelligence, role playing plays an important part in the process to liberate themselves, which takes a toll on the women, including the abbess who runs the retreat. In more ways than one, the play calls to mind another play set at a quirky retreat, Bess Wohl’s excellent Small Mouth Sounds. Both plays feature deeply idiosyncratic characters with deep flaws that actually make them endearing. They’re also both passionately acted and stylishly directed, although The Convent (which has been directed by Daniel Talbott) would have benefited from a less flashy, projections-heavy production. But unlike Ms. Wohl’s more balanced play, the intense, relentless rage that emanates from The Convent ultimately makes it a wearing experience.

Although both plays are far from masterpieces, it’s encouraging to see these stories portrayed onstage in a regular basis. It’s about time.

INTELLIGENCE
Off-Broadway, Play
Next Door / New York Theatre Workshop
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through

THE CONVENT
Off-Broadway, Play
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater at the Mezzanine Theatre at A.R.T. / New York Theatres
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through February 17