The Desperate Enigma of ‘Thom Pain’

×

Expand

Photo Credit: Lily Shea

The Underground Collaborative might just be the coziest theater space in town. The intimate studio theater proved to be the perfect space for Theatre Nervosa’s staging of Thom Pain (based on nothing). Playwright Will Eno’s one-man show featured recent Marquette graduate A.J. Magoon as the title character—a desperate enigma of a man talking in front of an audience for 70 restless minutes. One-man shows are challenging enough for any actor.

Eno’s script makes the challenge of a lone actor holding an audience’s attention that much more difficult. He’s a sinister and annoying figure who still has to come across as being vulnerable and likable enough to hold an audience’s attention. Under the direction of John Schneider, Magoon valiantly climbed into the dizzying psychological complexity of the title character: He’s trying to tell two or three stories at once while suffering from crippling self-doubt and occasionally lashing-out at an audience the character was simultaneously detesting and falling in love with.

Eno’s script leaves a lot of room for menace and malice that can be subtly passive-aggressive one moment and openly insulting the next. Charismatic and playfully charming, Magoon avoids the more vicious end of Pain. His Thom Pain is a an adorably pitiful man just trying to make it to the end of the show and maybe gather a bit of wisdom along the way. Magoon’s wistful intellectual whimsy made Pain more than tolerable for a pleasantly engaging evening in a basement space downtown.

The next show at the Underground Collective will be the Constructivists’ Midwest premiere of Jennifer Lane’s To Fall In Love, March 29-April 13. For more information, visit ucmke.com.