Jennifer Samuels (Suli Holum) grapples with her own twin in CHIMERA (photo by Richard Fleischman)
HERE
Dorothy B. Williams Theatre
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 28, $20
212-647-0202
www.here.org
A relatively newly uncovered medical phenomenon that was first brought to light in 1953, human chimerism involves someone with two sets of DNA inside them — essentially, the person has absorbed what was supposed to be his or her twin. In Chimera, a mixed-bag solo show running at HERE through January 28, writer Deborah Stein and performer Suli Holum delve into this strange condition, named after a mythological monster, by examining the fictional case of Jennifer Samuels. Inspired by actual events, Chimera is narrated by Holum, the founding artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company, as a rather brazen, chippy woman with a Midwestern accent, an odd combination of Laurie Anderson and an infomercial huckster. She interacts directly with the audience, offering them coffee, taking a seat, and handing them props. “This is the kitchen. This is the theater,” she repeats throughout the eighty-minute show, regularly reminding the crowd of the artifice unfolding in front of them. She comes off as rather abrasive and annoying, making steady eye contact that can be both cute and unnerving. But the play makes a dramatic, and extremely welcome, shift when Holum turns into Samuels’s eight-year-old son, who is just coming to terms with the knowledge that his biological mother is actually his mother’s inner twin. Holum does a magnificent job embodying Brian, capturing the wonder and magic of being a child who is just beginning to learn of the many mysteries the world holds. Jeremy Wilhelm’s set is a stark white nonfunctional kitchen with a refrigerator on one side, a cupboard on the other, and a sink in the middle. Holum, also dressed in white, uses the set with a playful abandon, disappearing into one cabinet, emerging in the freezer, or appearing in a ghostly form behind a window over the sink. Kate Freer and David Tennent project a dazzling array of scientific videos onto the set and Holum’s body, including sonograms and DNA structures. Part of HERE’s HARP Residency Program and the Under the Radar festival, Chimera is an inconsistent but nonetheless fascinating journey into the search for identity.