From left: Sylvia (Kelly McAndrew throws a party and invites Linda (Randy Danson, center) and Hilda (Emily Cass McDonnell) in Lucas Hnath’s The Thin Place.
Lucas Hnath, recently represented on Broadway by the spun-from-fact Hillary and Clinton, and soon to be represented at the Vineyard by Dana H., a story drawn from family experience, is cleansing his theatrical palate between them with The Thin Place, a story of the afterlife that conjures up the eerie worlds of Conor McPherson and M.R. James. The dedication to Ricky Jay, the late magician, indicates Hnath is out to perform his own sleight of hand with a deeply unsettling ghost story.
The Thin Place opens with a monologue by Hilda (Emily Cass McDonnell), a blonde woman sitting in a mustard-colored chair (set designer Mimi Lien has gotten off easily, with just two chairs and an end table on stage). Hilda launches into a childhood recollection of her grandmother, who would think of a word and insist that Hilda identify it merely by concentrating on her thoughts:
Danson with Triney Sandoval as Jerry.
The thing about these little games I played with my grandmother ... they sort of opened up a door for me—a door to this “other place,” this—I don’t know what to call it—this... thin place… This place where the line between this world and some other world is very thin…
McDonnell’s halting delivery, trying to explain the inexplicable, is masterly, setting a tone for director Les Waters’s production of both reality and uncertainty that help to offset one’s natural skepticism and draw a listener into the story. She was able, Hilda says, to tune in to her grandmother’s thoughts, until her mother, feuding with her parent, declared their games demonic and banished her granny. But the object of their telepathy, was, Hilda says, “that if we got really really good at hearing each other’s thoughts like this, then when my grandmother died, someday, she would still be able to talk to me. She’d be able to send words to me from beyond the grave.”
After her grandmother dies, Hilda practices; she sits alone in a room and concentrates on communication. On occasion, she says, she felt a presence but never dared open her eyes. Inevitably Hilda attends a psychic “sitting,” where she meets Linda.
Linda (Randy Danson) is a professional psychic with a British working-class accent, and she seems to have made contact with Hilda’s grandmother. Soon Hilda becomes personal friends with Linda, imploring her to help her develop her own meager powers so that Hilda can replicate what Linda does. Because they have become friends, Linda can’t serve as Hilda’s medium any longer. Danson is easygoing and voluble, telling Hilda about her Dickensian childhood in England.
Hilda: [S]he was like a character out of a book from another time—She even had a mysterious illness.
Linda: …problem with my lungs, ever since I was a kid where I seize up, can’t breathe, inside it feels like stabbin’ pains—No one can explain it, not asthma said the doctor. Auntie Panana would say I was puttin’ it on for the attention—but she was a piece of shit.
McAndrews’ Sylvia is a benefactress to Linda. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
Two other characters play lesser roles. Kelly McAndrew is Sylvia, a wealthy benefactress to the prickly Linda, who bridles when Sylvia mentions the money she has bestowed on Linda. In fact, Sylvia may be the source of Linda’s support. In the scene, a small celebration that includes Triney Sandoval’s Jerry, Hilda remains mostly silent, although at one point she and Linda hold hands—is there more going on than is explicitly stated? Jerry notes that he once asked Linda: “What’s she doing with you and not me?”
The ambiguities, revelations and evasions are nebulous enough to keep many possibilities open. Hnath employs diversion in the way that Jay and all great magicians do. Eventually the story veers almost imperceptibly into obsession, as Hilda shanghais Linda for a car ride to her late mother’s empty house, where a strange cell-phone call originated.
With a set so minimal, Mark Barton’s lighting does heavy lifting to set the mood. It’s unfortunate that for quite a while it’s irritatingly bright, until the reason for it becomes strikingly apparent in a coup de théâtre called for in Hnath’s script. Then Barton does some equally heavy lifting with minimalism. By the end, the story has raised more questions than it has answered, but that’s a hallmark of its success. It envelops you and won’t let you take your mind off it.
As Hilda says: “I don’t know. Who knows anything really. … It’s just so easy to make yourself see what you want to see.”
Lucas Hnath’s The Thin Place runs through Jan. 26 at Playwrights Horizons (416 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (except Christmas Day) and at 7 p.m. on Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, call TicketCentral at (212) 279-4200 or visit phnyc.org.
