Marcus (Bill Heck) and Liana (Dagmara Dominczyk) face some shocking changes in brilliant play by Naomi Wallace (photo by T Charles Erickson)
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 20, $35-$85
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
Naomi Wallace’s Night Is a Room is a brilliantly conceived drama that is as poetic as it is shocking. In modern-day Leeds, England, Liana (Dagmara Dominczyk) has tracked down her husband’s birth mother, Doré (Ann Dowd), and wants her to have a surprise reunion with Marcus (Bill Heck) for his fortieth birthday. A stylish and successful marketing account executive, Liana manages it all; she even brings festive party balloons for Doré, blowing a few up as they talk in Doré’s small garden. Doré gave up Marcus, who she called Jonathan, when she was fifteen; she is a plain, frumpy woman who speaks in disconnected non sequiturs, takes everything very literally, and has apparently lived a rather droll, boring life. “So. What do you enjoy? In your spare time?” Liana asks. Doré, who cleans houses, responds, “I like to do Sudoku at the back of the newspaper those little squares all waiting for me imagine someone thinks it up everyday maybe a computer I don’t know but there they are for me I’ve always been good at numbers I skip the news it’s gossip mostly grubby isn’t it?” A moment later she says, “The lottery numbers each week I like to add them up then divide them by the day of the week as fast as I can and then times them by the month I can look at a number any long number and break it down quicker than you can crack an egg do you like eggs?” It takes a while for Liana to convince Doré to meet with Marcus/Jonathan, but they finally agree to the reunion. The second act takes place in Liana and Marcus’s living room, where the couple is in the midst of some hot and heavy sexual activity as they await Doré’s arrival. Liana and Marcus, who have a daughter working at the Art Institute of Chicago, are redecorating their home. But a whole lot more than the décor is about to change.
Doré (Ann Dowd) is in for some rather strange goings-on in NIGHT IS A ROOM (photo by T Charles Erickson)
What happens next makes it impossible to discuss the plot any further, built as it is around a head-shaking, jaw-dropping twist that will have some members of the audience considering leaving at intermission and others scanning their brains, wondering just where things can possibly go in the third act. But sticking around is a necessity, as the surprises keep coming as two of the characters become mired in a spectacular, unpredictable verbal face-off, even if the denouement is a bit too pat. Night Is a Room concludes Wallace’s (The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East, One Flea Spare) three-play Signature residency, which began with And I and Silence and continued with The Liquid Plain; all three works take their titles from poems — Silence from Emily Dickinson, Plain from Phillis Wheatley, and Night from William Carlos Williams’s “Complaint” (“Night is a room / darkened for lovers / through the jalousies the sun / has sent one golden needle!”). Night has a lyrical elegance to it, despite, or maybe even because of, the subject matter. Heck (Cabaret, The Orphans’ Home Cycle) is fine as Marcus, but the play belongs to Dominczyk (Closer, The Violet Hour) and longtime character actor Dowd (Compliance, Candida), who are exceptional together, their rapport utterly fascinating in light of their shifting relationship. Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director Bill Rauch (All the Way, The Clean House) helms the production with an innate intelligence and a subtle beauty, letting the tension build and the story unfold at just the right momentum. Rachel Hauck’s three sets all focus on chairs, perhaps to encourage the audience to remain seated and not leave. Night Is a Room is one of the strangest, most challenging family dramas you’re ever likely to see, and it’s also one of the most rewarding if you allow yourself to get swept away in its unique and memorable world.