Wilma Theater presents Christopher Chen's world premiere 'Passage'

Chen — introduced to Philadelphia with his ingenious Barrymore Award-winning drama Caught, produced in 2014 at InterAct Theatre Company — was here inspired by E.M. Forster's 1924 novel A Passage to India. Rather than setting his story in any historical era or region, however, Chen introduces “Country X,” ruled by “Country Y.” He names other countries, as well as characters, with only letters, instructing that any role can be played by any actor.

Thus Chen resists parallels to India and England, or to U.S. blacks and whites, or to any other modern or historical conflict between two countries and cultures.

Another director might cast all Country X characters as one race, gender, or hair color and Country Y as X's opposite, thereby creating tidy, coded parallels; Zizka (wisely) does not. Gender, race, and everything else mix in both countries in this production. The only difference between the people of each place is their attitude toward the other.

Anywhere and nowhere

Clothing styles, by Vasilija Zivanic, show subtle differences: Ys dress in solid whites, tans, and gray, while X people are a bit more colorful. Matt Saunders’s set, a large platform tiled and decorated downstage but black upstage, with an imposing cement-looking wall at the back, tells us little to identify any particular country or culture. Shiny black rocks are strewn about the stage floor and the downstage part of the platform with no clear meaning or purpose. Maria Shaplin's lighting sculpts the large area in mysterious shadows.

This lack of definition makes us focus on personalities but, of necessity, the dialogue also lacks specifics and can be difficult to follow, though Chen foregoes language barrier issues.

F (Krista Apple) is a Y teacher, starting a job in X. She's friends with Q (Justin Jain), another Y who moves to X to join his fiancé R (Ross Beschler). B (Lindsay Smiling), "the best country X doctor in country X," debates the play's central question with fellow country X friends M (Keith Conallen) and H (Taysha Marie Canales): "Is it possible to be friends with a country Y person?"

When B and F feel a mutual attraction, the question is tested. At the end of Act I, a gun appears.

Stay with me

Act II — missed by many who fled the performance at intermission — reveals B caged, charged with assault. Though Q fired a gun, as a Y citizen, he's out on bail. B and F debate issues of unequal treatment, bias, suspicion, and fear. The legal situation infects their personal trust. Act I's more abstract political arguments, and its characters, largely fall away.

Then G (Sarah Gliko) steps forward. She's appeared already as a mosquito and a gecko — a fascinating creature-on-the-wall observer — to comment in archly humorous asides. She makes a direct appeal to the audience, asking, "How can we depend and not depend on others?"

She says, "If you're not feeling this, you can leave," and I admit I felt a tug toward the door. G's long monologue feels like the playwright breaking out of the play to address us. Maybe it's a bold, Thornton Wilder-esque fourth-wall-shattering to stun us into awareness; perhaps it's an act of desperation, because the melodramatic story of Q, F, and B hardly represents all the possibilities between people of countries X and Y.

She entreats us to stay with her, implying that theater may be the one place where people listen openly and connect (another Wilder echo). I recall the famous Forster quote, "Only connect." She also tells us this isn't scripted, which feels condescending and false. We know better.

Sounds of violent revolution rise at the end, confirming that there's no good end to this situation — or to Passage. Chen's experiment feels unfinished: not only inconclusive but uncommitted. In these perilous times, it's impossible to say the right thing, but one must say something.