Luna Theater's "How to Disappear Completely' (1st review)

The title of How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found dangles a promise—if not of adventure, than at least of escape. Fin Kennedy's play also attempts to meditate on questions of identity and selfhood: Do we consist of more than our jobs or our buying habits? Or are we merely papers in a bureaucratic machine? To that end, Kennedy's work borrows themes and plot points from a slew of films—Fight Club, Catch Me if You Can, Memento, The Matrix— not to mention dramas such as Sartre's No Exit and Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

But these original works asked us to identify with con men, hobos or world saviors. Kennedy's everyman, by contrast, differs little from anyone else.

At 29, Charlie Hunt grinds through his job in a London marketing firm by snorting coke, evading drug dealers, embezzling funds and overbilling clients. His personal life matches his professional disasters—his girlfriend hates him, his mother recently died and, as he boasts to a model at a party, "I work all the time, don't have any hobbies, I don't travel or meet anyone interesting, so I have no fun stories to tell."

That blandness surely grounds the promise of escape that's relished by many overworked young people who lack family, friends or goals other than "Rinse and repeat." David Stanger's fierce, raw portrayal reflects a despair that's as viable as any addiction and just as debilitating. So when consequences inevitably catch up to him, it comes as no surprise that he wants to disappear.

Time is the new money?

Here, Kennedy's script shifts from its otherwise fast-paced depiction of corporate meaninglessness to a literal how-to guide to changing your identity. But again, Kennedy's work disappoints. Instead of presenting the sort of original escapism found in The Matrix or Fight Club— two films he paraphrases liberally— the script regurgitates the instructions found in pamphlets sold in the back of comic books.

As Charlie's underworld friend Mike (Mark Cairns) narrates the identity-changing process, play-acted scenes re-enact how to get a new birth certificate or passport by duping snooty desk jockeying bureaucrats. Only Jennifer MacMillan's clever and funny twists of accents and lisps renders these scenes palatable.

Kennedy's script nearly wastes Aaron Oster's slick sounds and Michael Long's spectacular set design of video projections and stills— among the best utilization of multimedia I've seen in Philadelphia (Long could become small theater's affordable answer to Jorge Cousineau).

Greg Campbell's direction bulldozes through every passage just to keep pace with Kennedy's dictum that "time is the new money." Each scene's windsprints leave little breath for the humor that might have invigorated the staging. The play's one intriguing metaphor— that lives are the lost property a consumerist society leaves behind— fails to develop.

Still waiting for Godot

This is a shame, because few contemporary playwrights even attempt to tackle heady themes like personhood and post-existential trauma. The hopeless, nightmarish landscape of Kennedy's narrative reminds us that we could use a 21st-Century Waiting for Godot.

But few writers can approach such issues without moralizing. When Charlie adopts a new alias, he learns there are no second acts in any life. In response, the other characters peddle pedestrian platitudes as wisdom: Take joy in the little things, disappearing hurts those who care for you…

(If you fail to grasp these messages, not to worry: A pathologist in a morgue helps Charlie understand each unfolding scene.)

Sartre at least embraced the nihilism head on. Kennedy's play re-purposes trite themes, poses old questions and leaves us with no answers, no escape and, yes, no exit.♦


To read another review by Alaina Mabaso, click here.