Other People offers another look at the scandalous lives of struggling New York artists
By Ava Baccari
Directed by Aaron Willis
Written by Christopher Shinn
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The cast of Other People. Photo by Mercedes Grundy. |
The kids in Christopher Shinn’s play Other People, about a gaggle of broke, twentysomethings holed up in New York’s East Village, are—as you would imagine—not all right.
Here we go again: a saga told many times before (Friends, for one) Shinn’s thinly contrived plot indulges these self-involved young adults whose woeful pasts have not only stifled them creatively (and verbally, it seems) but makes for awkward, irrelevant stage material that consistently scrapes along at surface level.
Longtime friends Petra and Stephen are recently reunited at a New York diner and awaiting the return of Mark, Stephen’s ex-lover, who will complete their trifecta of naval-gazing struggling artists all living under one Manhattan roof over the holidays. It’s clear from the onset that this much baggage won’t fit in their shoebox apartment.
Written by New York playwright Shinn, whose 2008 play, Dying City, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer prize, the show first opened in London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2000; its Canadian premiere, on now at the Tank House Theatre at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, a collaboration with Mutual Friends Co-Op and Mercedes Grundy, already feels dated.
From the opening scene, Ben Lewis’ Stephen is unbearably grating—a fast-talking nervous-wreck whose gag of speaking in stunted, barely English phrases tires quickly. The rapid-fire, pseudo-intellectual dialogue Shinn longs for—which worked wonderfully in 90s’ teen soap Dawson’s Creek—translates into hyper-self-conscious psycho-speak in his lost youth: “I always kept my life very compartmentalized,” Stephen admits in one of his many rehashings of what went wrong with Mark, (Indrit Kasapi).
After a short bout as a Hollywood director, Mark returns to New York as a devout Christian. In his period of reform, he brings home a bible and a stray youth, Tan (Brendan McMurtry-Howlett) and Stephen grows suspicious of Mark’s intentions.
Tatiana Maslany’s Petra, an aspiring poet from Queens who moonlights as a stripper, is likely the most believable character, though even she is prone to chronic, convoluted philosophizing of her writerly impulses. She attempts to explain to a particularly inquisitive client (Mike McPhaden) that she took up the gig in Japan to pay for grad school, and continues to dance even after returning to New York for more artistic reasons than simply paying the bills.
It’s hard to tell if the show’s lack of engaging substance is inherent to Shinn’s script or a shortcoming in Aaron Willis’ production (though the techno music consistently humming along during many intimate discussions is particularly distracting). The functional minimalist set transforms from apartment, to restaurant, to nightclub with ease but is awkward and uninspiring.
Like all starving-artist twentysomethings, what these kids, and the show, need most is some sagely, guiding direction.
Other People runs until January 28 at the Tank House Theatre at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. Visit youngcentre.ca for more information and to buy tickets.
