The Poor Itch

Photo/Joan Marcus

It's not easy to write about Iraq. [Draft A.] It's not easy to write theater about Iraq. [Draft B] It's not easy to write theater. [Draft C] It's not easy to write.

A flash of lights, the unchecked, photographic full-bright of a boxing ring, the sound of a bell (see David Ives's "Sure Thing," perhaps) echoes -- ominously -- in the background.

[Note to self: scratch that bit. You're putting the description before the plot.]

That's how a proper review of The Poor Itch would be written. It would do more than mirror the unfinished play's fragmented forms; it would shed light on the creative process, allowing the reader to understand the steps I, as a writer, took to match words to thoughts, and ideas to themes. It would be a bold review, no doubt, but that's what it would take to do justice to John Belluso's play, for that is the way in which Lisa Peterson has staged her late friend's last work. In the interests of keeping things straight, imagine, then, that this review parallels the first act of The Poor Itch (which is largely complete and unbroken), and then use your imagination to consider the second, which is not only more symbolic, but more representative -- in fragments -- of Ian's physical condition (he is paraplegic) and mental decline (he suffers from PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder).

Ian's a typical anti-hero, but while his ends are the same, Christopher Thornton plays the means against type. He's bitter, yes, but he's proud of being a soldier, and when he inevitably snaps at his fussy mother, Coral (Deirdre O'Connell), it's with a frightening physicality that we don't expect. He regrets having sex with his best friend Curt's (Michael Chernus's) now-pregnant girlfriend, Erica (Susan Pourfar), but not so much that he won't do it again, simply because he still can. He takes recreational drugs, but refuses to take his OxyContin, not running from anything so much as wheeling alongside his problems, trying to run them down. And although he writes letters to his Army buddy McGowan (Marc Damon Johnson), he's well aware that his friend is dead. Nowhere is his inner turmoil clearer, though, than in the way he treats Katie (Alicia Goranson), a spirited physical therapist with a need for attention. In his other scenes, Thornton most resembles a cog that has been sharpened into a specific use, a use that -- post-Army -- has left Ian abrasive and without a place, but around Katie, he allows himself to soften (well, part of himself).

With Thornton in command of his role, Lisa Peterson is free to concentrate on altering the rest of the world around him, which she does, smoothly. At first, he only sees the singing translator (Piter Marek) in his dreams, as he floats endlessly downstream with McGowan, but it isn't long before the very furniture he sits on suddenly changes (with lighting cues from Ben Stanton) into the raft, or a wall being hammered by gunfire (Robert Kaplowitz's gunshots even come with the sound of spent casings hitting the floor). As the play moves from dive bars and ratty apartments into Ian's repressed memories, doors fly into the foreground, full of mystery and symbolism, the figures behind them (Churchill at one point, Bush at another; both as they divide up Iraq) grim parallels for the true figure lying there, handcuffed, with endless water sloshing over his face.

Even unfinished, those are some pretty hard to miss statements, and Peterson fleshes the rest out by having the actors read the stage directions or notes for scenes that were never written. (A grim observation: all of the incomplete scenes had to do with reconciliation. Doesn't it say something that it is easier for Americans to write -- to comprehend -- torture than kindness?) In conjunction with the alternate versions of scenes, played one after another (the actors skip around as if it were no big deal to fill in such Sapphic blanks), The Poor Itch is as good a glimpse as you're ever going to get into the inner workings of a playwright's mind. We're all the richer for this production, even if it leaves us with some nagging itches in our hearts.

Hunting and Gathering

Photo/James Leynse

Brooke Berman's new play, Hunting and Gathering has the personal connection -- the playwright's been in and out of homes since the '90s (she writes about it on her blog) -- the hipster street cred of a YouTube tie-in, and a ticket initiative at the occasionally musty Primary Stages ($20 tickets through 2/2 with code PS35 if you're under 35). It features the teenage wonder of a LED stripe that announces the title of each scene, the young adult release found in playing the arcade game Buck Hunter, and the sad truths of life in New York City, painstakingly accounted for from couch surfing to housesitting, from brokers fees to subletting, from Craig's List to the Classifieds, and it does so pretty wittily. It's even got some dynamic personalities, from the transient "gatherer" Ruth (Kiera Naughton) to the young, in-the-moment "hunter" Bess (Mamie Gummer), both of whom are or have been involved with the man-child Jesse (Jeremy Shamos), a literary professor who doesn't know how to live on his own. And there's a breakout performance from Michael Chernus as Jesse's brother, Astor, a free-loving self-proclaimed Buddhist who's looking forward to his new career as "Man With a Van." (Who wants the "corporate sponsorship of a salary"?) So why does Hunting and Gathering seem so shallow?

The answer lies in all these brand-name woes: from Ikea to Park Slope ("a place where everyone pretends its Woodstock") to MapQuest, it's all just glittery surface. I mean, we're introduced to Ruth not as a character, but as a slide-show presentation of the former apartments where she's lived (this play got its start as a ten-minute one-act for MCC in which Berman did just that), and although she speaks of how she's been affected by the various places where she lives -- settling into the culture of each resident's book collections, their taste in movies, &c. -- there isn't an ounce of that in the way she stubbornly interacts with her best friend, Astor (who has such a big thing for her that he's willing to sleep on an air mattress for her -- an air mattress!). A lot of this play follows that same disconnect between what's said -- or rather, referenced -- and what's experienced.

This works rather well for the slick director, Leigh Silverman, and the nifty set designer, David Korins, as they're able to conjure up just about any prop they need from a giant wall of cardboard boxes. The script's about as deep as a hundred square foot studio, but Silverman makes it work, realizing, more than the characters in the play, the concept of Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." Since there are no walls, just wide open space, she allows the actors to make their own walls and limitations, which heightens the truth of Berman's play: home is what you make it.

By definition then, the play's also what the actors make it, and here, they're on good terms. Even though Bess has little purpose in the play beyond being Ruth's opposite, and Jesse's girlfriend, Mamie Gummer plays her with real gumption -- when Jesse points out that she's his student, she reminds him, "I'm only auditing," and then, with a twinkle in her eye, "Want to make out?" Ultimately, it's not much of a surprise that the best moments are those that stand back from Berman's glib writing and hyper modernity -- in a scene called "The Middle of the Night," the focus shifts from Ruth's side of the stage, weird noises and dead, headless birds on the roof, to Jesse's side, where he gobbles down Swedish Fish, trying to get over his loneliness. Both move for the phone, both put it down, and it's only now, with the house cleared of all that distracting clutter, that we actually see them as people. Only Michael Chernus manages to channel that same feeling into his lines, decorating each one with a Christmas-lighting of subtext.

Perhaps the shallowness of the play is necessary to express the sorts of characters that Berman is dealing with. And maybe I'm naive in thinking that Ruth and Jesse are a little too old to be so passive and adrift (the 30s are the new 20s). But I wish there were less packing peanuts in this big-box play, because underneath all the Styrofoam wit, these lonely characters are aching to make a connection.