Plays: 'Whirligig' proves provocative but unbalanced

A whirligig, according to Webster's Dictionary, is "a child's toy that whirls or spins, as a pinwheel." Whirligig, written by Mac Wellman and directed by Jyana Sunshine Gregory, BK '98, shares many qualities with its namesake. Although the production is full of energy and motion, the play is not quite sure of its direction, and it topples short of achieving full connection with its audience.

Whirligig begins in the abstract representation of an anonymous bus station somewhere in the sprawling mass of America. GIRL (Kristen Kenney, JE '99) is a young rebellious woman with streaked green hair and the overwhelming desire to escape her own existence. She waits, with two faded blue suitcases, for a bus headed anywhere away from home. She tells the audience that her one desire is to become one of the Mongolian Huns, who "obeyed no laws and had no rules."

This confession is interrupted by MAN (John Patrick Higgins, TC '98), a tuxedo-clad, silver-painted version of David Bowie's The Man Who Fell To Earth. Classifying himself as "a Weird," MAN explains that his original planet, the sand world of Plinth, was blown up in a nuclear accident. He has arrived on Earth after visiting a series of other planets determined to figure out what it is that makes humans happy. Unfortunately, the guide he chooses is involved in her own personal revolution, passionately intent on proving both her unhappiness and the sad state of her world.

In one of the play's most intelligent moments, GIRL gives us a portrait of her once-hippy parents, who have become right-wing conservatives fiercely supporting the American dream. Kenney gives GIRL a vibrant, if painfully stylized, energy, and Higgins does a nice job making MAN both innocently curious and eerily menacing. The silver makeup accentuates the character's duality. Both GIRL and MAN need something from one another, and the two vascillate between connection and hiding behind their respective tough facades.

As other characters enter this bleak bus station, the relationship between GIRL and MAN solidifies. Ian Robertson, DC '01, as BUS MAN, does a nice job with a difficult role, although his vaguely Southern accent is at times inconsistent enough to be distracting. SISTER, a highly unpleasant character who purposefully grates on the nerves of both GIRL and the audience, is portrayed well by Danielle McCarthy, JE '97. Her brash rendering improves the quality of the later sections of the play.

The set of Whirligig is appropriately understated, and in her direction, Gregory uses the sometimes difficult theater space of the Silliman Dramatic Attic nicely. Two ladders and a single black curtain complete the picture. The costumes, all black, silver and white, complement the set and the action, as does the consistent and mostly soft lighting.

The problems with Whirligig lie mostly in the script, which tempts the audience with potential understanding before sharply veering off in a completely different direction. Is this a play about human happiness? Is it attempting to express contempt for a particular kind of human existence, steeped in traditional values and safe attitudes? The play is obviously searching for an escape from rules and laws, but in doing so, it leaves its audience without a path to follow. Just when we think we have grasped the integral qualities of the characters and where they are going, we are dismayed to find that the action completely shifts and we have not understood anything at all.

Gregory has also made some strange choices as a director. Her actors move in highly stylized manners, choreographed at times like modern dancers speaking lines of dialogue. Experimental in nature and sometimes quite striking, as in the scenes where MAN mimics the mannerisms of those around him, the staging of Whirligig is definitely jarring. It is a style that is highly effective when it works but badly fails when it seems forced. An example of this comes late in the play, when four characters spend several minutes in intense choreographed motion accompanied by chanting. While enjoyable to watch as a theater exercise, it is difficult to reconcile this segment with the rest of the play.

MAN, attempting to explain his situation to GIRL, tells her several times that "the surface of things is obscure." For this production of Whirligig, MAN's words hold true. The surface of the play is too obscure to break through, and the audience is left wanting answers it will never receive. But perhaps that's what Whirligig wants.

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