It’s exciting enough to come
upon a really terrific play; but to see one that may well be a contender for
the classic status of great American play provides a unique rush—and
that’s the one that I, at least, thought I was having at The Whale, by Samuel
D. Hunter at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp upstairs theatre.
It
tells the story of Charlie (Shuler Hensley), a grotesquely, life-threateningly overweight man who is
paradoxically, intellectually brilliant, and makes his living as an unseen,
online teacher of English at the college level. Despite his depression,
seclusion and self-destructive lifestyle, though, he somehow remains compassionate
to strangers, grateful for those who care about him and hopeful about the
potential of people to tap into the best part of themselves. And along with the
layers of fat that encase his body, the layers of his emotional heart surround
a number of secrets about choices he’s made and the people in his life.
I’ve
elsewhere talked about plays that offer what I call imitation enigma, a pretense of indefinableness to fuel debate and
discussion later. It’s a device that, when used in realistic drama (as opposed
to theatre of the absurd and impressionistic theatre, and the likes of Beckett,
Pirandello and Ionesco), almost always strikes me as the cheapest and laziest
way to be mysterious about the unknown nature of the human soul, especially as pertains to perverse behavior. But genuine enigma—which
is to say, dramatically speaking, a mystery about the human soul that will be
revealed, in a worthwhile and satisfying way—is quite different, and it
is that which Mr. Hunter offers here.
I’m
loath to discuss too much about the other characters because to profile
them
too explicitly is to ruin your sense of discovery, so a perfunctory
mention,
just to highlight the extraordinary cast: there’s Liz (Cassie Beck) the registered nurse who is Charlie’s closest friend
and caretaker; Elder Thomas (Cory Michael Smith) a young door-to-door spokesman for Mormonism who
randomly appears to impart the Goddish good news; there’s Ellie (Reyna de
Courcy), the estranged teenage
daughter Charlie hasn’t seen since she was two; and finally his ex-wife Mary (Tasha
Lawrence). They’re all splendid under
the equally grade-A direction of Davis McCallum.
The
Whale’s language doesn’t reach for
the poetic heights of Williams or the epigrammatic resonance of
Miller—except, arguably for a few passages in which such language is
attempted as a consciously acknowledged example of what reaching for the
heights might entail (Charlie is very concerned that we reach for the
heights)—it mostly just employs contemporary idiom; but it does so with
such unerring economy and precision, such clarity and insight, that it makes a
grand case for the poetry of everyday speech.
As
well as the fragile, needful value of even the most injured human spirit…
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