Marjan Neshat inhabits the title role in David Cale’s Sandra.
The Vineyard Theatre opens its 40th season with Sandra, an eerie solo show that dips into the murky waters of missing persons and false identities in order to demonstrate how physical disappearance can manifest itself in many forms. A friend will take off, a business will burn down, a spouse will depart, a house will grow bare, and a lover will become unrecognizable. It’s enough to drive a person to drink, and sure enough, given this title character’s unsteady relationship with alcohol, plenty of wine and liquor will also disappear. So much emptiness, but the result is a mostly fulfilling evening of theater.
A change in posture means a change of character as Sandra (Neshat) transforms. Photos by Carol Rosegg.
The intermissionless piece is written by the wonderfully unsettling monologist, David Cale, and helmed by veteran director Leigh Silverman. This is the same duo who, in 2017, brought the one-man shocker Harry Clarke to the Vineyard, and in many ways Sandra is its troubled sister. The two plays share a common DNA, but have their own unique personalities. Whereas stage and screen phenomenon Billy Crudup portrayed Harry, Sandra is played by Marjan Neshat, a rising star known for deeply inhabiting the women she embodied in the Off-Broadway productions of Selling Kabul and Wish You Were Here. And whereas Harry was intentionally living a double life to ingratiate himself with a stranger, Sandra is at risk of losing her own sense of self when the men that bring meaning to her life vanish and the lies of strangers nearly get her killed.
Speaking directly to the audience, Sandra confides the details of her plight. She is a recently separated Brooklynite who owns a café and apparently has enough savings not only to stock her bar but to take spontaneous trips to Mexico. Her travels are triggered by the disappearance of her best friend, Ethan. Before he left for a Puerto Vallarta vacation, Ethan had mused to Sandra that “I feel like disappearing from my life. Part of me just isn’t in the world.” So when he fails to return home, Sandra downs a bottle of wine, buys an airline ticket, and jets off to find her pal. Has he been kidnapped? Gay-bashed? Or is he simply living out his dream?
On this first trip, she meets the flamboyant Beauford, who speaks, she tells us, with the “vaguely Southern accent some gay men seem to naturally acquire even though they’ve never been anywhere near the south.” He tells Sandra of a mystery man who may be up to no good, and she cannot shake off the possibility of his connection to Ethan even after returning to New York. So back to Mexico she goes, this time meeting Luca, a “palpably sexy man.” They soon become lovers, ending Sandra’s chance of ever reconciling with her husband, and eventually sending her down a twisty road where Ethan will remain a mystery and Luca will be revealed as a mortal danger. Sandra’s café and her existence as she knows it go up in flames.
Sandra (Neshat) ponders her future in Sandra, a one-person show at the Vineyard Theatre.
A David Cale work is recognizable by its cinematic use of music to affect the mood of a scene. It is an approach he has been toying with for decades, reaching back to his 1987 performance art hit, Smooch Music. For Sandra, composer and frequent Cale collaborator Matthew Dean Marsh has conjured a background score that is deceptively calm, like a placid ocean surface hiding an ominous undertow. Silverman directs Neshat’s performance in a similar vein. No matter what comes her way, Sandra keeps calm and carries on. This is partly Hitchcockian thriller tradition; nobody wants to watch Grace Kelly grow unhinged. But it is also because of the uniquely problematic nature of a show that is reliant on storytelling. Sandra must be both a fallible protagonist and a reliable narrator. The result is that the production occasionally loses its balance. For instance, it is hard to believe Sandra’s initial drunken airline ticket purchase when we are simply told about it, instead of being shown.
Neshat must also transform herself into the play’s other characters and, in doing so, she embraces a technique that is another of Cale’s hallmarks. Rather than attempt a full embodiment, Neshat makes due with slight physical adjustments and an often broad change in accent. Luca and Beauford are not their own men, but rather sketches of how Sandra perceives them. What we lose in not seeing Luca’s villainous self, we gain in the understanding of Sandra’s naivete toward him. Thom Weaver’s clever lighting design, meanwhile, keeps the audience assured of Sandra’s location, even when she at times is feeling lost.
Sandra runs through Dec. 11 at the Vineyard Theatre (108 East 15th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, visit vineyardtheatre.org.
