{"id":1,"date":"2022-12-18T14:20:21","date_gmt":"2022-12-18T14:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/?p=1"},"modified":"2023-11-28T15:35:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T12:05:04","slug":"des-moines-review-drowning-in-the-drink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/des-moines-review-drowning-in-the-drink\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Des Moines\u2019 Review: Drowning in the Drink"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Theater Online<\/a>: Here\u2019s how you make a depth charger: Pour some beer into a jar or mug of your choosing until it\u2019s about halfway full and then drop in a shot glass of whiskey. Then gird your loins, because this isn\u2019t a drink for the delicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet the odd characters in \u201cDes Moines,\u201d which had its New York premiere on Friday night at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, can\u2019t even use the depth chargers (as they call the drink) that they consume as an excuse for their peculiarities. The play, written by Denis Johnson and presented by Theater for a New Audience with Evenstar Films, drops a cast of characters into the depths and doesn\u2019t try to reel them back in. Instead, we\u2019re often the ones lost at sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written before he died at 67 in 2017, \u201cDes Moines\u201d is Johnson\u2019s ninth and final play. A celebrated novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet, he is best known for the novel \u201cTree of Smoke\u201d and the short story collection \u201cJesus\u2019 Son.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDes Moines\u201d showcases many of his signatures: deadpan absurdism, misfit characters, heavy drinking and drug addiction, deception, and statements on the bleak, incontestable fact of human mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one scene in the play, Dan (Arliss Howard), a 60-something cabdriver in present-day Des Moines, sits at an oval table in the center of a rustic wood kitchen, where he asks his pastor Father Michael (Michael Shannon) to do him an unusual favor. \u201cIt\u2019s an experiment,\u201d Dan says. \u201cI just want you to suddenly yell at me to wake up \u2014 that I\u2019m dreaming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though \u201cDes Moines\u201d unfolds across an evening and a morning in the Iowa home of Dan and his wife, Marta (Johanna Day), it may or may not be taking place in Dan\u2019s imagination \u2014 or in a bizarre dream shared among its characters. Before the pastor appears, Dan recounts to Marta how he picked up a heavily made-up Father Michael for a ride outside a gay club on a Friday night, and how a woman named Mrs. Drinkwater (Heather Alicia Simms) keeps visiting him at work. She is a widow whose husband recently died in a plane crash nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nef and Michael Shannon in \u201cDes Moines.\u201dCredit\u2026Travis Emery Hackett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But Dan and Marta seem as though they\u2019re having different conversations: He\u2019s jumping among the encounter with Father Michael; his conversations with Mrs. Drinkwater, whose husband Dan drove to the airport the morning of the crash; and the virtues of butter over margarine. She\u2019s waiting for the chance to tell him about a serious diagnosis she has received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Father Michael, Mrs. Drinkwater, Marta and Dan, along with the couple\u2019s granddaughter, Jimmy (Hari Nef), a trans woman whose botched gender affirming surgery has left her using a wheelchair, all join together in seemingly endless rounds of depth chargers. This party turns from karaoke to table-banging, thrashing and sex in a kind of otherworldly bacchanal of troubled souls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dialogue is imbued with an uncanny disconnect; the characters feel so aloof that when they speak to one another, it\u2019s as if they\u2019re just shooting random phrases from the separate worlds each inhabits. In the middle of a conversation about Des Moines farmland, Father Michael says to Jimmy and Mrs. Drinkwater, \u201cSometimes the horror of my youth is so vivid \u2014 so near, so accessible, that I feel as if I just got plucked from it one minute ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s Johnson\u2019s phlegmatic dread, so casual yet biting. But \u201cDes Moines\u201d also lacks the precision of Johnson at his best; there\u2019s a vague emptiness and mourning that underscores every bit of the play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A program note mentions that Johnson and Arin Arbus, the director of this production, met in 2015 to workshop \u201cDes Moines.\u201d When asked if he would clarify the \u201cmysterious and difficult\u201d work, Johnson refused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arbus\u2019s direction accommodates Johnson\u2019s vagaries and quirks, so watching the production feels as if we\u2019re being taken on a long, slow ride to a remote destination \u2014 only to arrive, unceremoniously, at nothingness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a tediousness to the production that somewhat diminishes its charms, the main one being the talented cast. Howard\u2019s Dan is both disgruntled and likable despite himself and his low-key racism and homophobia; he rambles on about his dreams but refuses to dig any deeper, too frightened to address the hurt that he and others around him carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day keeps Marta taut with an underlying sorrow and resentment that perfectly counter Dan\u2019s uneasy evasions. As Jimmy, Nef brings more color to the character than is written; with a bit of boldness and mischief, she incites some of the night\u2019s mania but then fades into the background. Simms\u2019s performance is a constant surprise, full of buttoned-up restraint, and then wild desperation and touches of something like joy \u2014 or as close to that emotion as a woman thrown askew by grief can muster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shannon is hilariously awkward as Father Michael, lumbering around the stage with a flat-footed shuffle, his shoulders rounded and his pants pulled up an inch or two too high. He plays the pastor like a na\u00efve child stuck in a grown man\u2019s body, equally uncertain of his place in the play\u2019s offbeat and mundane moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Riccardo Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s set design, the entrances and exits are what often draw the eye: Stage right, the kitchen side door leads out to a small landing and stairs that allow us to hear every entrant before we see them. At stage left, an interior hallway, we get brief peeks into the characters\u2019 dispositions, as when Marta gently braces one hand against the wall \u2014 just the slightest hint of difficulty. And upstage, behind the kitchen, French doors open to reveal Jimmy\u2019s space, a jamboree of multicolored Christmas lights and beaming ornaments in stark contrast to the rest of Dan and Marta\u2019s demure home d\u00e9cor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point in the midst of the show\u2019s madness, Mrs. Drinkwater exclaims: \u201cEverything is so ridiculous. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d It\u2019s true \u2014 everything is ridiculous, and after an hour and 40 minutes, \u201cDes Moines,\u201d like a night spent drinking at home, ends with a stubborn lack of resolution. What do you get after getting sloshed one evening in the company of ridiculous weirdos? An incredible, senseless hangover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Des Moines
Through Jan. 1 at Theater for a New Audience, Brooklyn; tfana.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new production of Denis Johnson\u2019s final play showcases many of his signatures: deadpan absurdism, misfit characters, heavy drinking and statements on the bleak fact of human mortality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-international-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theateronline.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}