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When you think you're going out of your mind
Sharr White's "The Other Place' in New York
Toby Zinman
"You're not giving me a whatever test."
"Cognitive."
For anyone who has found him or herself searching for an "“um…um…thingy, Sharr White's The Other Place is a terrifying play, illuminated by an astonishing performance by Laurie Metcalf. She plays Juliana, a middle-aged scientist whose lifelong research has been focused on the dementia that makes its first appearance in an "episode" during her lecture to a medical convention.
She's brittle, sardonic, rail-thin and wearing very high heels, but everything about Juliana's life—her wit, her marriage, her ironclad control, her idea of herself— is destroyed before our eyes. Violently, pitiably and cruelly.
"Not being myself is who I am now," Juliana tells us near the end of this searing drama.
Runaway daughter
The title refers, literally, to a happy house that once belonged to Juliana's grandfather. Family history is complicated here. Juliana and her oncologist husband Ian Smithson (Dennis Boutsikaris, in a subtle performance, conveying both loving husband, terrified husband and grim physician) have a daughter named Laurel who ran away from home when she was 15"“ perhaps with Juliana's 30-year-old research assistant— never to be heard from again.
Except there are phone calls; we see Laurel (Aya Cash, in one of several roles). This play is a mystery, a thriller, dealing not merely with unearthing elusive facts but with what's knowable if the brain providing the information is malfunctioning.
Who is the woman in the yellow string bikini sitting among the doctors at her lecture? We— and she— will discover the truth, in a devastating revelation near the play's end. The play is structured as a series of discoveries that we make as Juliana does, leaving us grasping for coherence as though we, too, suffered from delusional dementia.
Inside Juliana's mind
Joe Mantello directed with relentless and splendid skill, using every theatrical element available to him. A grid-like set, designed by Eugene Lee, both obscures and reveals the screen behind it, as if Juliana's mind has been pixilated and both she and we look through it at the video projections (by William Cusick). The lighting by Justin Townsend similarly illuminates and obscures. Together, all these elements create the perfect container for this remarkable play.
But the play and the stage belong to Metcalf in an exhausting, courageous performance. Watch as she watches her finger as it uncontrollably, rhythmically scratches her skirt, as if it belonged to someone else. Watch as her hands freeze in mid-air, helpless to continue her gesture. Watch as she drinks greedily from a bottle making primal "mmm mmm mmm" noises in her throat. Watch as she eats Chinese food with her hands: "So hungry."
"Are you… flirting with suicidal thoughts, Juliana?" her young doctor asks.
"Dating them, actually," she replies. "But they won't put out."
The "other place" of the title turns out to be not only the real house on Cape Cod but also the place you go when you go out of your mind, the place your vanished child disappeared to, the place that's not-life. The Other Place is a brilliant play lit by a genius performance.
"Cognitive."
For anyone who has found him or herself searching for an "“um…um…thingy, Sharr White's The Other Place is a terrifying play, illuminated by an astonishing performance by Laurie Metcalf. She plays Juliana, a middle-aged scientist whose lifelong research has been focused on the dementia that makes its first appearance in an "episode" during her lecture to a medical convention.
She's brittle, sardonic, rail-thin and wearing very high heels, but everything about Juliana's life—her wit, her marriage, her ironclad control, her idea of herself— is destroyed before our eyes. Violently, pitiably and cruelly.
"Not being myself is who I am now," Juliana tells us near the end of this searing drama.
Runaway daughter
The title refers, literally, to a happy house that once belonged to Juliana's grandfather. Family history is complicated here. Juliana and her oncologist husband Ian Smithson (Dennis Boutsikaris, in a subtle performance, conveying both loving husband, terrified husband and grim physician) have a daughter named Laurel who ran away from home when she was 15"“ perhaps with Juliana's 30-year-old research assistant— never to be heard from again.
Except there are phone calls; we see Laurel (Aya Cash, in one of several roles). This play is a mystery, a thriller, dealing not merely with unearthing elusive facts but with what's knowable if the brain providing the information is malfunctioning.
Who is the woman in the yellow string bikini sitting among the doctors at her lecture? We— and she— will discover the truth, in a devastating revelation near the play's end. The play is structured as a series of discoveries that we make as Juliana does, leaving us grasping for coherence as though we, too, suffered from delusional dementia.
Inside Juliana's mind
Joe Mantello directed with relentless and splendid skill, using every theatrical element available to him. A grid-like set, designed by Eugene Lee, both obscures and reveals the screen behind it, as if Juliana's mind has been pixilated and both she and we look through it at the video projections (by William Cusick). The lighting by Justin Townsend similarly illuminates and obscures. Together, all these elements create the perfect container for this remarkable play.
But the play and the stage belong to Metcalf in an exhausting, courageous performance. Watch as she watches her finger as it uncontrollably, rhythmically scratches her skirt, as if it belonged to someone else. Watch as her hands freeze in mid-air, helpless to continue her gesture. Watch as she drinks greedily from a bottle making primal "mmm mmm mmm" noises in her throat. Watch as she eats Chinese food with her hands: "So hungry."
"Are you… flirting with suicidal thoughts, Juliana?" her young doctor asks.
"Dating them, actually," she replies. "But they won't put out."
The "other place" of the title turns out to be not only the real house on Cape Cod but also the place you go when you go out of your mind, the place your vanished child disappeared to, the place that's not-life. The Other Place is a brilliant play lit by a genius performance.
What, When, Where
The Other Place. By Sharr White; Joe Mantello directed. Through May 1, 2011 at MCC Theatre at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St., New York. (212) 279-4200 or www.mcctheater.org.
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