Mary K. Ryan’s Emotional Autopsy at Alchemist

The latest show to hit the stage of The Alchemist Theatre is concise, little four-person drama written by Mary K. Ryan. 100% of the  ticket sales from opening night went to support Project Return. The organization’s mission is really, really important. This nation’s method for dealing with those who break the  law is clumsy and childish. Project Return’s mission to re-integrate people into society after prison is a noble one. 

Written by Mary K. Ryan, the script for Use No Place Soon challenges audiences to think about the nature of criminality. One man, his mother and his wife are talking with a man who is interviewing them. 

The action of the play takes place almost entirely during this interview. We are not seeing these characters in their natural habitat. Their memories and emotions are being dissected outside their normal lives. The man being interviewed has engaged in criminal activity. We might find out why by the end of the show. We might even find out what the criminal activity was. 

Taken completely out of the context of normal life, Ryan is plunging a scalpel into our understanding of human intention. It’s interesting, but taken outside of the context of normal, daily life, it does’t offer as much insight into humanity. What happened to these characters has come and gone. And there’s been a lot of death of a lot of different kinds that has gone on with these characters. Ryan offers us an emotional autopsy of these characters. 

In a way it kind of feels like a reality TV/TV newsmagazine interview with a group of Tennessee Williams characters after the final curtain. Ryan does a pretty good job of drawing-in an audience with selective release of details over the course of the play. but there’s a kind of initial disconnect that makes it difficult to connect up with these characters. So often when watching a play, we’re on a date with these characters that we know we’re probably never going to se e again. The formality of this show’s interview format makes that feel a lot more like a job interview with people we’re never going to hire. It feels difficult to know how to relate to that. This drama is very much a clinical look into what makes us human. 

The ensemble itself is pretty solid. Mark Neufang puts in another memorable performance. His character is weary and exhausted--emotionally drained in every way possible. He’s been trying to be what people expect him to be--what HE expects him to be. And so Neufang is found here playing a man who is tired of playing the role of himself. Kind of an interesting side note to this is the fact that this is Neufang’s FOURTH show in a row. Four shows in a row and as I recall, they were all pretty heavy dramas, so he doesn’t have to go far to channel an emotional fatigue for the role. He might have done a little more to draw in a unique personality to that exhaustion, but it’s fascinating to watch how emotionally inert he is here. It adds to the mystery. No matter how often you look at a picture of Dahmer or Gacy or Cheney or Hitler or anyone else involved in criminally sinister activity, you try to look for that place where the evil lies. And you don’t see it because it’s something we’re all creating within our own perceptions, but the mystery remains. Neufang’s performance here is an interesting gaze into the emotional exhaustion seen in the faces of those who do morally  reprehensible things. 

Kaitlin McCarthy plays the wife. She’s here to take part in the interview more for a sense of trying to figure it all out. We get the sense that she’s not actually here to support him exactly. There’s a sense of love, but she’s really upset. In a sense, we’re seeing the play through her eyes because, as an audience, we’re her to figure out what happened before the events of the play as well. The difference here is that she’s already emotionally invested and she already knows what happened. It’s interesting to note, though, that knowing what Neufang’s character did and knowing his background doesn’t mean that she’s any closer to understanding it than the rest of us. This is a fairly big issue and in many ways it’s the center of the drama. McCarthy exhibits both vulnerability and strength in the role, both of which come out with the kind of emotional discomfort one would expect from a character in this position.

Sara Pforr plays the mother of the criminal. She loves him very much like any mother would love a child. She also know that he’s done something unspeakable and is trying to reconcile that. Rick Berggreen is the interviewer. We don’t get much of an idea of the world outside of the three characters in question, but I would have liked to see a little bit more rendering of who this guy is and what he’s doing interviewing these three people.  

We see so little of the world outside these three characters that there was a part of me that kept expecting some kind of twist at the end. Like this whole thing was taknig place in a world where something completely innocuous is considered the most heinous form of criminal activity or something. Or maybe they all t urn out to be dead. I don’t know. It was kind of distracting. Granted there IS no twist at the end, but as a modern audience in an information-rich world, we relate to  the world outside through details like . . . precisely what it was that Neufang’s character did that was so wrong. I  think I may have missed a lot of the subtlety of characterization while I was looking at Neufang trying to figure out what this character did that was so wrong. Rest assured, I think I can say without giving too much away that there really isn’t a twist at the end. And what Neufang’s character did WAS awful. Here we are bearing witness to what he’s like after he did what he did. It’s an emotionally post-apocalyptic drama. The horror has come and gone and these people are trying to relate to it. 

Use No Place Soon runs through April 26th at the Alchemist Theatre on 2569 South Kinnickinnic Avenue. For ticket reservations, visit the Alchemist online.