Thom (Damian Young), Evelyn (Gamze Ceylan) and Lily (Ana Cruz Kayne) attend grief counseling in Doménica Feraud’s Someone Spectacular.
Doménica Feraud’s new play is set in a grief support group, where members reminisce about the “someone spectacular” they’ve lost and figure out how to cope without them. This should be very moving, but instead it seems trite and formulaic.
Trite because Someone Spectacular’s insights into the feelings and experience of grief are no more sophisticated than “After it happened, no one at work said anything, so I tried to act normal” and “I think about what it would be like if I was the one who died.” And the premise of a meeting or class attended by a group of people who would not otherwise be acquainted has been used before.
Nelle (Alison Cimmet, right, with Young seated near her) doesn’t think Jude (Delia Cunningham, left) belongs in the group.
There’s also a glaring lapse of logic at the heart of the story. A young woman named Jude (Delia Cunningham) is in the group because she had a miscarriage. Nelle (Alison Cimmet), a member whose sister died, is supposed to seem mean by telling Jude that what she experienced is not the same as losing a sibling, spouse or parent you’ve known and loved for years—except Nelle is right! And the professional in charge would have referred someone like Jude to a perinatal bereavement group.
Perhaps the biggest problem with Someone Spectacular, however, is that the actors really don’t seem to be feeling as bad as they say they feel. If they did, the show would be a lot sadder. This disconnect is the fault of the script, not the actors—whose characters are developed sparsely or inconsistently. For example, Nelle says she has to get home to make dinner because her husband is “useless” and mentions they “would have gotten divorced if it wasn’t for” her sister, but that’s as detailed as it gets.
Thom (Damian Young), a widower, claims he’s barely functional (“I don’t remember what hunger feels like”), yet he keeps running out of the room to take work calls and is dating again. And Lily (Ana Cruz Kayne), a young actress whose mother passed away at 51, acts more aggrieved than grieving. The other people in the cast are Evelyn (Gamze Ceylan), who also lost her mother—but she was old and “like Grey Gardens”—and Harvard-bound Julian (Shakur Tolliver), who’s mourning the aunt who took him in.
The play’s final moments bring a bit of a plot twist, but the revelation lacks any apparent purpose other than surprising the audience, since it doesn't change anything about the characters' experiences losing and mourning someone.
Kayne’s character Lily is a stand-in for the playwright, who also lost her mother after a very brief illness. Photographs by Julieta Cervantes.
Would people so scarred by death choose to play Fuck, Marry, Kill while they wait for their grief counselor to arrive? In a bit as contrived as it is vulgar, the group members play multiple rounds of FMK—a game that scriptwriters use as a conversational gimmick far more frequently than people play in real life (if they ever do).
While parts of Someone Spectacular are too glib—characters’ remarks sound scripted rather than how people spontaneously express themselves—at other points the dialogue is realistic to the point of being dull, as a discussion of approaches to therapy would be if you had no attachment to the people involved.
Despite all the chatter, the audience never learns much about any group members beyond basic demographics and broadly painted personality types. And we don’t get a deep understanding of the people and relationships they have lost, either. Their stories mostly just reiterate how saintly the deceased was (“the one person who had my back”; “She put everyone above herself”; “My wife was all the best parts of me”) or mention some cutesy or quirky-sounding detail—a widower and his wife called each other “Panda”; somebody’s late sister grew cacti.
The actors do work well as an ensemble, as directed by Tatiana Pandiani, who keeps the action—which proceeds in real time—moving at a good pace. Costume designer Siena Zoë Allen has dressed each character as might be expected for their type: an elegant outfit for Evelyn, a dress shirt on Thom, yoga pants for Nelle, oversize sweats on Lily (Jude is rather unstylish for a fashion student, though).
The set—a community center room with watercooler and a table holding snacks and coffeemaker—is an atypically ordinary design for dots, known for such elaborate scenic work as Appropriate on Broadway. Someone Spectacular’s lighting and sound were designed by Main Stem veterans, too. This production has ample talent behind it; unfortunately, it’s fronted by a story that’s not very interesting.
Someone Spectacular runs through Aug. 31 at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 W. 42nd St.). Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday, with matinees at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; someonespectacularplay.com.
Playwright: Doménica Feraud
Director: Tatiana Pandiani
Sets: dots
Costumes: Siena Zoë Allen
Lighting: Oona Curley
Sound: Mikaal Sulaiman
