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(Like I said: helpful.)
So, deconstruction, ho!
Then we blink, and its gone again.
While theres much fragmentation inScene Partners, I wish it led to more breathtaking coalescence.
Under the cool direction of Rachel Chavkin, the production never feels quite as extreme as it might.
Still, Caswells ambition is palpable, and we do get curiouser and curiouser.
If the experience isnt always fully rewarding, its consistently intriguing.
And, in Dianne Wiest, Caswell has found a spookily appropriate muse.
Does she even know where she is, or who?
Mother left Father for a man with more money and a job in Wisconsin.
In 1928, already pregnant, she married another abuser, a man of Polish descent named Stanley Kowalski.
I have been acting all of my life!
Its about time I get paid for it!
Thats the picture once weve reassembled it, andifwe can trust our protagonist.
Or perhaps were living inside Meryls brain, irreparably damaged from Stanleys attacks and possibly more.
Her mind is collapsing in on itself, fashioning a dreamworld from bits and pieces.
Caswell keeps things slippery, right down to his title.
Does Meryl have any scene partners that arent Meryl?
/ Its all in her head.
Its more fluid than that, less interested in presenting thesolutionto Meryl than it is in dramatizing her multiplicity.
Is this, like, a memory play?
asks one of her acting classmates when Meryl enlists them to act in her life story.
Another pipes up: Do you want it realism or should it be more likewhoa.
Meryls answer and Caswells are the same: All of the above.
The story of Meryl shifts under your feet, says Hugo, the famous director.
Need Caswell have made his thesis statement explicit?
But it certainly serves to temper our expectations: Were going to be left hanging.
And I cannot have another in my life!
Why do you suddenly sound British?
Meryl asks him sweetly.
I thought you were Australian.
Meryl, says Hugo, with a matinee-idol smile, you know better than anyone.
We are everything and anything.
Theres something endearing about this, but its diminishing, too.
When the ground shifts under our feet, its vibrations are apt to diffuse.
Is that what bothers you?
Meryl asks Siehs arch anchorwoman.
Not being on solid ground?
As it is,Scene Partnerstantalizes, ultimately leaving the brain buzzier than the body.
Were interested, but were left craving astonishment.
Scene Partnersis at the Vineyard Theatre through December 17.
