2 weeks ago
8
What happened to our lit successful 2020? What benignant of papers did we make of the immense bewilderment, the isolation, fear, and loss? With much distance, patterns volition surely commencement to look — idiosyncratic retired determination is astir apt already cooking up an English seminar connected pandemic writing. If so, they should see Abe Koogler’s Staff Meal, a softly surreal shapeshifter of a play with a tilted consciousness of wit and a generous, sorrowful heart. Koogler started penning Staff Meal successful January 2020 and finished the archetypal draught successful April, and portion the play is intriguing without that context, whole different strata of feeling and meaning uncover themselves erstwhile you know. Imagine watching a creation imported from an unfamiliar spot — first, its shapes and rhythms are interesting; past you larn that it’s a ceremonial dance, a creation of mourning, and it becomes thing else.
The play’s light, alinear question circles astir a edifice — and besides the thought of a restaurant. Onstage, determination are tables and candles and silverware, Deco-printed wallpaper and debased lighting, servers (Carmen M. Herlihy and Jess Barbagallo, some large astatine being sweetly weird, attentive, thoughtful), and the aura of a mythical proprietor whose name—Gary Robinson—the servers susurration with hypnotized reverence. “Have you work Flights of Fancy?” Barbagallo’s server asks an anxious caller waiter (Hampton Fluker) astir a publication Gary has written, the contents of which are near vague. The caller feline has not, which launches some elder servers into the benignant of knowing homily you mightiness get from a record-shop worker who’s appalled that you don’t ain Blonde connected Blonde:
Server 1: Everyone reads Acts of Service – astir nary 1 reads Flights of Fancy.
Server 2: They’re companion pieces. You can’t recognize 1 without the other.
S1: But virtually nary 1 reads Flights of Fancy!
S2: Some customers have. The existent customers have.
S1: Obscure, but essential.
S2: It’s Gary Robinson’s champion book.
In the show’s program, Koogler writes astir being “fascinated by restaurants,” by “the intricate bushed of a radical of radical moving unneurotic to marque and service meals.” The metaphorical leap to theatre isn’t hard to make. Both, astatine their best, are made up of intertwined “flights of fancy” and “acts of service.” Both are fueled by passionateness and, astatine their less-than-best, instrumentality vantage of it. Both impact a batch of unpaid oregon underpaid labor; weird schedules and excessively overmuch alcohol; collaboration and vision; playfulness and rigor; a committedness to excellence and a belief, contempt each the bullshit, successful transcendence. The phenomenal Hulu amusement The Bear is astir a restaurant, but its hero, Carmy, could beryllium talking astir theatre erstwhile helium offers this comfortableness to his chap chef, Sydney: “Look, it’s astir apt hard for your dada to beryllium supportive due to the fact that helium doesn’t recognize that this occupation doesn’t wage much, it doesn’t magnitude to anything, and it doesn’t marque a full batch of sense, you know?”
What other makes a edifice the cleanable awesome for playmaking? COVID-19 took some distant from us. In Staff Meal, manager Morgan Green and her scenic decorator Jian Jung person mapped retired a agelong arc from seeming normalcy to emptiness and absence. In the tiny Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Jung has constructed an ambitious acceptable of interlocking, sliding walls that signifier and reshape the space, slicing it into hard angles and, the further the play goes, swallowing some locations and radical into pockets of darkness. Greg Keller and Susannah Flood are fantastic arsenic a brace of benignant weirdos who statesman arsenic coffee-shop strangers with a regular waving acquaintance, determination toward an progressively phantasmagorical archetypal day astatine Gary Robinson’s restaurant, and then, beyond the warm, bizarre information of the restaurant’s walls, disappear. “The city’s truthful acheronian tonight,” says Mina (Flood). “Why is everything closed?” says Ben (Keller), blinking into the shadows. “Where is everyone?” Mina whispers. “There’s nary taxis, there’s nary cars connected the streets … I don’t perceive the subway, the lights are each red.” Ben fractional laughs: “The nuts — the feline who sells nuts, is gone…”
“I’m sorry, WHAT IS THIS PLAY ABOUT?” shouts the fantabulous Stephanie Barry during a wickedly comic infinitesimal of metatheatrical breakdown. I don’t privation to spoil the full sequence, but coming wherever it does, Barry’s question does much than marque america laugh. We’ve got to instrumentality clip with it, transportation it with america for the remainder of the amusement — and though overmuch of what Barry has to accidental is straight-up hilarious (“Do you ever get this feeling with young writers, oregon aboriginal writers, writers who are developing … bash you ever wonder: When volition they develop?”), she’s besides cardinal to helping america recognize that what this play is astir is loss. Staff Meal is astir loving something, spending clip and attraction and effort connected it, watching it evaporate successful beforehand of you anyhow — past sitting successful its lack and starting to wonder, What did it mean aft all?
That’s wherever the rubric comes in. If you ticker The Bear (or enactment astatine a restaurant), past you already know, but conscionable successful case, a integer marquee supra the acceptable fills america in: “STAFF MEAL: A repast that a edifice serves its unit extracurricular of concern hours, escaped of charge.” So Staff Meal is simply a play for the radical who marque plays. “It’s a circumstantial concept, this restaurant,” says Barbagallo’s server with scholarly confidence. “You person to cognize what you’re successful for.” Herlihy’s server isn’t truthful sure. She tilts her head, musing: “But however galore radical are truly into it? … Like if you marque this restaurant, and you cognize it’s awesome, and your co-workers cognize it’s awesome, and rare, and special, and a fewer customers cognize that too, but astir of the customers—the radical who are really like, expected to devour astatine the restaurant—aren’t truly that into it, is it truly a bully restaurant?” At this point, immoderate creator successful the assemblage is attempting to conscionable beryllium chill and bash immoderate heavy breathing earlier going into a nationalist panic attack.
Koogler knows that radical are going to usage words similar “weird” and “surreal” and “experimental” to picture Staff Meal. He knows that the amusement is “a circumstantial concept” and helium is, successful part, offering it arsenic a acquisition to his co-workers, an enactment of work for the ones who mislaid their livelihoods and intent erstwhile the satellite shifted. But helium besides knows that genuinely generous, worthwhile theatre is ne'er conscionable for an in-crowd, and that “the radical who are really like, expected to devour astatine the restaurant” request to consciousness welcomed — challenged, destabilized, surprised, yes, and besides excited. It’s not astir dumbing down oregon straightening out, but astir moving from a spot of invitation. Great chefs tin service chaotic meals and large artmakers tin instrumentality you connected chaotic journeys if they’re moving not from condescension but care.
But then, each the attraction successful the satellite can’t forestall the tablecloth from getting pulled oregon the crushed from caving in. If it’s not plague, it’s capitalism oregon plain crap luck. The servers nervously guarantee themselves that Gary Robinson is “pretty fucking rich” and “as agelong arsenic Gary Robinson’s astir we’ll beryllium fine.” But who is Gary? Who’s really successful complaint of anything, and however bash we alteration systems we truly person precise small hint astir erstwhile what we’d similar to beryllium doing is conscionable making bully things with bully people? In Staff Meal, the unparalleled wildcard Erin Markey embodies some the tone of chaos and the hidden haplessness of authority. As a lurking, mumbling, metamorphosing vagrant, they haunt some edifice and play, grinning arsenic they archer us, “I americium the menace … And … [I] support this full happening going.” Markey is—and I accidental this arsenic highest praise—a full freak. They astir interruption the amusement simply done their pronunciation of the connection “chestnuts,” and erstwhile they pass us—about the hierarchy of ownership and absorption astatine the restaurant—“it’s vagrants each the mode down,” there’s thing downright Beckettian astir it. Without recourse to literalism, Koogler conjures the quintessence of 2020 — the absurdity and fragility, the aimlessness and intelligence rabbit holes, waiting and grief, the forgetting however to speech to different people, listening to yourself and reasoning I dependable similar an alien successful a idiosyncratic suit. Staff Meal feels similar a portal: We tumble done its funny, eerie evocation of the infinitesimal that made—is inactive making—our present, and we travel retired the different broadside feeling, for each its ebb toward emptiness, full.
Staff Meal is astatine Playwrights Horizons done May 19.
English (US)