‘Ancient History’ at Outvisible lovingly begs the question: Just what is going on here?
ALLEN PARK, Mich.–Playwright David Ives has long mastered one of the most difficult things in writing–dialogue.
In plays like All In The Timing, The Lives and Deaths of Harry Houdini and others, the words that come out of characters’ mouths actually sound and feel like the real stuff people say and how they say it. The number of playwrights who get this right is frighteningly small.
It is also true in Ives’ Ancient History, now being performed at Outvisible Theatre in Allen Park. The two-actor play, ably performed by Ryan Ernst as Jack and Caitlin Morrison as Ruth, is about two people in a relationship who don’t quite know what they want or don’t want from one another–until the end of the play that is.
But while audience members are glued to the two characters and what they are saying to one another, they can also be excused for not knowing exactly what is happening. Ives employs the sometimes maddening device of replaying scenes with different dialogue and content.
The structure can be so disconcerting (Just what IS going on?) at times that I thought Ernst’s Jack might actually be dead and just in the head of Ruth. A quick chat with the actor after the show revealed that I was not alone. Even the actors have discussed what might be going on.
Jack is a Math teacher. Ruth does something that pays her a salary, though we aren’t sure what. Jack dons a bathrobe through the play. Ruth is Jewish, and has a lot of cross currents of wants and emotions including wanting to marry Jack, a goy that her parents do not approve of, and wanting her eventual children to go to Hebrew School, though she doesn’t attend synagogue. Oy!
Jack is an atheist and wants no part of the world of prosperity and conventions that a corporate job, or even a university, might afford. But he clearly likes Ruth’s legs and the highly compatible sex.
But what exactly is going on? The play never gets out of Jack and Ruth’s bedroom. A clue to what really binds them? Could this 90 minutes of dialogue be taking place in their heads as they lie in bed after sex?
The universal appeal of Ancient History is that every couple goes through the process of being sexually enamored and then goes about figuring out if they want the same things, or at least compatible things. It takes place in just about every culture, leaving out the incidence of arranged marriages.
The set is simple in Outvisible’s intimate performance space. The bed, a dresser, a chair. Ruth wriggles in and out of a little black dress, panty hose, Jeans. She curls her hair while she talks to Jack. We are close enough to the actors to hear them breathe.
There are rings of a telephone that happen and then cause the dialogue and point of view in the scene to shift. We aren’t sure why. What does it mean? It is disconcerting. And in some moments it made me pause, and distracted me from paying attention. It also made me a bit angry at times. We can debate whether that is a good thing or not–to make me feel uncomfortable. Should the director do a pre-show talk on the structure? Maybe
In any case, the performance of Ernst and Morrison are excellent and their chemistry perfectly delicious. And whoever said that being a little challenged as an audience member is a bad thing? It’s not as if relationships are linear. Why should a play about a relationship be so terribly linear.