Review by James Wilkinson
Hir – Written by Taylor Mac. Directed by Brooks Reeves. Scenic and Properties Design: Ilona Overweg & Kevin McGrath. Costume Design: Elizabeth Rocha. Lighting & Sound Design: Christopher Bocchiaro & Robin Donovan Bocchiaro. Produced by Apollinaire Theater Company at Chelsea Theater Works, February 14-March 8, 2020.
Apollinaire Theatre Company’s production of Taylor Mac’s Hir is a disorienting piece of work, (I think this is mostly by design, so stick with me). From the moment the stage lights come up, the world feels off kilter and I think that the audience can smell it. It pushes them onto unsteady ground. When we go to a narrative drama, we’re often looking at how and why characters change over a period of time. With Hir, the change has already happened, leaving the rest of us to get up to speed with them. It’s as though we’ve caught these characters with their hands already half-way into the cookie jar and as they proceed to empty it out in front of us they keep assuring us, “don’t worry about it…this is fine…just don’t worry about it.” Is it though? I guess that’s up to us.
There’s a lot to like in Hir, starting with its delightfully anarchic beating heart, which Apollinaire’s production digs into. It looks to have a good time on its own terms and damn the consequences. I laughed my head off during the play’s first act while many in the audience around me sat frozen, unsure of how to respond to what they were seeing, (though, it’s worth pointing out that I saw the show with a matinee crowd, which are notoriously tight-lipped). A few of those audience members eventually loosened up, getting into the groove the play is leading them along. I do think that the play begins to run into trouble during the seventh inning stretch as it tries to pull together all of the threads that it’s been spinning out over the course of the evening. At the same time, the sense of disintegration feels oddly “right” for a play which gleefully takes a baseball bat to everything we know. It should end in a mess. The old systems are dead. Long live anarchy.
Here the prodigal son comes home from the war to discover…what, exactly? That the world he left behind no longer exists. Chaos has taken root in his family. The familiar sense of order has been overturned. Anarchy breeds and our old heroes have all been destroyed. Well…at least that’s what he thinks. The broad strokes of Hir could read as the description for some long-lost Greek drama. Elder child Isaac, (Alexander Pobutsky), has returned home after being dishonorably discharged from the army. It was his job to collect the body parts of blown-apart soldiers so that they could be shipped home for burial. He’s been kicked out of the service due to a drug habit he developed while dealing with PTSD, (which he insists he doesn’t have). Now he’s returned to a home that’s nothing like what he left. His father, Arnold, (Floyd Richardson), has had a stroke, putting him in a feeble state. His mother, Paige, (Danielle Fauteux Jacques), has taken the opportunity to upend the household. Piles of clothing and junk are strewn all over the house. To keep Arnold docile, she feeds him estrogen pills in a daily milkshake and has him spend his days in a house dress, clown make-up and wig. Perhaps most disorienting to Isaac is that while he was away, his sister came out as transgender, is now his brother Max (Lou Annlouise Conrad) and uses the pronouns “hir” and “ze.” So it’s all a bit much for a person to take in, (fair enough). The audience is right with Isaac as he tries to make sense of everything that’s changed and bring back the order and structure that he felt the old ways had. It’s not that easy though, because there are pieces of his family history that he’s unaware of and other developments that happened while he was away that will ultimately prevent any of them from going back.
I walked into the play assuming that the title was pronounced like the word “her” but actually it’s “here,” as in “the here and now.” It’s a distinction that feels deliberate considering how the issues of gender identity/politics that the play tackles have recently come to the forefront of the wider cultural conversation. We’re here to deal with the here and now. The rules that many of us were raised with are being called into question and in some cases, thrown out. Mac’s play and Apollinaire’s production seems to capture the confused state many of us are in as we adjust to the coming new world order. We’re all Isaac, (or, at least some of us are. Some of us are also his sibling). But for a play that seems to revel in needling the audience, it’s not completely throwing out the rulebook. Mac’s play is working within a very specific American tradition of family unit plays and very clearly has the work of Sam Shepard at the front of its mind, (in fact the end of act one almost perfectly syncs up with a few scenes in the latter half of Shepard’s Buried Child).
I think that Apollinaire Theater, (and Brooks Reeves’ direction), gives the play a fine staging. As Mac’s play tosses in more and more balls for the show to juggle, the production doesn’t blink. It accepts them and incorporates them into the general flow. The scenic and properties design by Ilona Overweg and Kevin McGrath is pitch perfect, recreating a kind of pre-fab, starter home playground for the action to take place in. It’s chock-full of carefully placed details for the eye to take in. The costume design by Elizabeth Rocha gets to go in some fun places and zany places as the evening wears on. In fact, the highlight of the production is the way that it embraces its own weirdness. Reeves’ manages to get some delightfully comic moments out of Mac’s set ups. You laugh because you don’t quite understand what you’re seeing but you want to lean in closer. That’s how it gets you.
The trip up comes in the play’s second half, where the feeling sets in that the play doesn’t quite know where it wants to go. It begins to spin its wheels, giving us more of what was already in Act One. I suspect, (based purely on internal evidence), that this comes from Mac eventually running into a developing ambivalence about the play’s themes. Yes, the old systems might have resulted in something toxic and unsustainable, but the play does acknowledge that there’s something appealing (and maybe even necessary) about having some sort of structure. It’s kind of a wavering note for the play to end on and you leave feeling a bit unfulfilled. Apollinaire’s production gives us a good swift kick. But I’m not sure where we’ll be when we land. For tickets and more information, visit their website: www.apollinairetheare.com
