Review by James Wilkinson
‘Deal Me Out’ – Written by MJ Halberstadt. Directed by Shana Gozansky. Scenic Design: Jillian Tone. Lighting Design: Qian Chengyuan. Sound Design: David Wilson. Costume Design: Talia Adler. Properties Design: Sally Tomasetti. Produced by and at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston through March 1, 2020.
To understand this review, you have to understand the mentality of a critic. I’ve seen, (and read), a number of spiritual siblings to Deal Me Out, the new play at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Plays that look to directly speak about the moment we’re living in (however you may define ‘the moment’. Pick your poison.). A collection of characters is assembled, meant to stand-in for the surrounding society, and then they have at it. Trapped in the playing space of a stage, the characters bash into each other, releasing the tensions that the playwright tells the audience are all around us, (usually while they wag a finger at us). Grievances are read, vendettas have out and we’re all expected to go home moaning, “Oh, what a world! What a wretched world we live in!” Granted, the description of “two characters walk into a room and have an interaction” applies to pretty much every play, but I think that there’s something particularly insidious when the playwright tries to say us, “this is us, today.” Telling us what’s what without the aid of hindsight and perspective tends to lead to something we slog through rather than are exhilarated by. In pursuit of the present, playwrights oversimplify, they condescend and I end the evening going, “Yeah, I’m not buying this.”
So with all of this in mind, when you finally do run into a play that manages to break the pattern and work in direct conversation with the world outside the theater, it knocks your proverbial socks off. On a pure technical level, Deal Me Out works with the quiet efficiency of a well-made clock. It’s well-written, well-directed and well-acted. But what gives it the extra kick is the fact that’s it’s being produced in February of 2020 as the country is gearing up for another presidential election. The day I saw the show, I arrived after scrolling through what felt like an endless Facebook feed of liberal-leaning friends ripping into each other about the Democratic primary. I know I’m not the only one. We all seem to be surrounded by this muck. It’s this mindset that we bring with us into the theater and it’s this mindset that Deal Me Out feeds upon to an exhilarating end. It’s quite possible that if the play were produced a year ago or a year from now, it wouldn’t have the same effect that it does. We’re hitting the flint just right. In the days since I’ve seen it, I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about the piece and as I do, I only seem to like it more and more.
It’s not a breakaway hit right out of the gate. The world presented by playwright MJ Halberstadt is one that’s chugging along perfectly fine without us. It takes a while for us to find our footing and catch up to the characters, to understand the nature of their relationships to each other. But the slow release of information works in the plays favor, keeping us engaged as we piece together exactly what’s going on. It’s November of 2016, barely a week after the presidential election. A group of friends in their late twenties has come together for the weekly game night they’ve held since high school. This gathering will be different though, because the group has made a decision about their future. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s advertising for the show gives away what that decision is, but I think the play works better if you don’t know. It’s not exactly a shock when you learn what it is, but much of the fun of the play is the way that Halberstadt deliberately toys with the audience on the way there. Every time we’re about to grasp the keys he’s got dangling in front of our face, he yanks them back a little further.
I say this because for much of its run time, Deal Me Out manages to stay refreshingly complicated. The audience I saw the show with wasn’t especially responsive during the performance and when the end of show blackout came, they froze, stunned that it was over. I think that it’s because that on some subconscious level, they were waiting for the cues within the text to tell them how to feel about what was happening. Cues that never came because there’s nothing black and white here. Rather appropriately, Jillian Tone’s set design slathers the stage as one large block of grey. You’re going to have to figure it out on your own.
It’s not a spoiler to say that the play is concerned with what people are willing to do in order to feel that they’ve entered what the new liberal-speak calls a “safe space” and how the rise of Trump has complicated that notion. Daily interactions become zero-sum games with everyone just itching to press the detonator. All of the characters in Deal Me Out are horrible; or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that they all have their own moments of horrible-ness. We understand why they’re making the decisions they do, but we can never fully align with them because we’re let into the destructive consequences. We can’t get comfortable here, all by design. Halberstadt’s play is needling us and rather twistedly, it’s having a good time as it sticks it in. It’s like the dentist who flashes just a bit too much smile as he asks, “Oh, does that hurt?”
I’ve seen a number of shows directed by Shana Gozansky over the past year and out of all of them, I think this might be the strongest one she’s helmed, which is certainly saying something. Even when I’m not wild about the play, like with BPT’s The Book Club Play from last fall, I’ve always thought that they were very well staged, (the lone exception being Merrimack Repertory Theatre’s production of The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, a play I found so depressing I couldn’t finish writing about it.). Gozansky has a way of orchestrating group scenes that feels dynamic without drawing attention to itself, a talent on display in Deal Me Out. The characters are in constant motion, shuffling and reshuffling around Jillian Tone’s immaculately detailed garage set, but the movement always feels organic, never stagey. There’s a great flow to it, a rhythm that the play settles into and never drops.
The acting ensemble is excellent across the board. They all manage to weave together the various threads of their characters so that they feel lived in. We easily buy into the decade-plus relationship that these characters have. Actor Matthew Bretschneider as Dez does something rather interesting with the role that seems to set his character aside from the others and isolate him, (there’s actually a reason for this, plot-wise, which you’ll understand when you see the show). The rest of the characters spend the play unleashing but conversely, Bretschneider’s part requires him to hold all the emotion in, allowing it to crack out at only a few moments. When he is allowed to let it all out, he strikes with a crazed intensity, only to suck it all back in.
There is, I think, one misstep that comes near the end of the play, (call it a minor irritation, really). As one character exits the stage for the last time, he does so with a bit of dialogue that feels like it comes direct from the playwright’s mouth rather than the character. In that moment, the illusion gets a bit fuzzy because we’re not getting behavior, we’re getting a sermon. The character even leaves in a manner that seems to mirror the end of a Mister Roger’s Neighborhood episode. You practically expect to hear “Now children, what have we learned here today?” on his way out. Though, who knows? We’re now off into uncharted and frightening territory. Who wouldn’t want a guide to give us a nudge along the way? For tickets and more information, visit their website: www.bostonplaywrights.org
