Wife (Susan Lynskey) and Husband (Michael Aguirre) in The Jewish Wife by Bertolt Brecht
An evening of one-act plays, such as those in Brecht: Call and Respond, presents considerable challenges. Playwrights and actors must develop and sustain their characterizations quickly and intensely over a shorter period of time. The umbrella title for three works, Brecht: Call and Respond includes The Jewish Wife by Bertolt Brecht, Sunset Point by Arlene Hutton, and Self Help in the Anthropocene by Kristin Idaszak (the last two were commissioned by New Light Theater Company in 2019).
All three plays have several unifying elements involving a female lead. Chief among them are the hold that a romantic partner, husband, or lover has on a woman’s psyche and the ways their relationships pull them in and constrain them. In each case, it’s clear that something unpleasant is about to happen to the woman. Each woman is an “other” who is ostracized and squeezed, if not forced out of her home or home to be.
Joy (Lucy Lavely) in Self Help in the Anthropocene.
Brecht’s The Jewish Wife is riveting. The German playwright’s minimalist references to Nazi ostracism of Jews and those who support them alludes to the future horrors of the Third Reich. The play opens with Judith Keith (Susan Lynskey) methodically packing her belongings into a suitcase. She places a frame into the case, and then returns it to the dresser. There is nothing ominous about this, but her ensuing phone calls portend that something is awry. In one call, Judith admits, “These are troubled times and everybody’s careful.” The varied details she provides of the trip suggest she is lying.
Eventually, her monologue reveals she is a Jew and thus “less valuable” to the Nazis and an impediment to her husband’s career. She rehearses her farewell speech to him: “There you sit, watching your wife pack and you say nothing… And let’s not talk about misfortune. Let’s talk about shame. Oh, Fritz.” Moments later, when Fritz (Michael Aguirre) returns home, they pretend that their separation will be temporary and that Fritz will send Judith funds, neither of which is true.
Brecht’s play primes the audience for Sunset Point, a contemporary, initially subtle tale of a couple’s diverging values and an emotion-laden snapshot of an interfaith marriage-to-be. Henson (Gerry Bamman) and younger Rachel (Lindsay Brill) seem affectionate and accommodating but argue after Henson insists on buying his great-grandfather’s home, which Rachel hasn’t seen. He says it’s a wedding present, but it’s in a restricted community where Rachel, a Jewess, will not be welcome.
What shall it be—the woman or the house? When Henson points out that Rachel isn’t a practicing Jew and doesn’t set foot in a synagogue, it angers her. She knows she is already the subject of some residents’ gossip and will be excluded from social activities by the Sunset Point women. The emotions searing in Rachel, matched by Henson’s self-centeredness, propel her into a tearful, “temporary” breakup at the close, which clearly won’t be temporary at all.
In Self Help in the Anthropocene, Joy (Lucy Lavely) is determined to get rid of “stuff.” She segregates and disposes of items with “Thank you for your service,” and provides truly comic overtones, reminiscent of the universal struggle to downsize. Yet the near exuberance in Joy’s disposal of her “stuff” is misleading, because it masks her anxiety about why, when martial law has been imposed, her wife, a geologist (Susan Lynskey), has not returned home since morning. She is ambivalent about her wife’s insistence on “self-help” to prepare them for a move. It is only revealed at the play’s conclusion that Joy and her wife are frantically trying to flee a dystopic, police-state-like regime.
Henson (Gerry Bamman) and Rachel (Lindsay Brill) in Sunset Point. Photographs by Hunter Canning.
Self Help in the Anthropocene is the most ambiguous of the evening’s plays, in terms of plot and themes. Could the forces pursuing Joy and Wife be Nazi-like self-styled Űbermenschen threatened by the wife’s activities? It’s unclear. Nevertheless, Lavely masterfully vacillates between leeriness about the future and feigned enthusiasm about the regimen for which she has been groomed. Her wife demands they flee or risk being sent to a Climate Center—a camp where people enter but never emerge. Yet their distress is less palpable than Judith’s and Rachel’s in The Jewish Wife and Sunset Point.
Despite Lavely’s brilliant “selection” process, Self Help in the Anthropocene disappoints as the closing to an evening of works about female empowerment despite forces and individuals aiming to constrain women. This play fails to provide as convincing a picture of the adversaries as do the others.
New Light Theater Project’s Brecht: Call and Respond runs through Feb. 15 at the Paradise Factory (64 E. 4th St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and 3 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, call the box office at (630) 632-1459 or visit newlighttheaterproject.com.
