It’s a bit unfortunate that Third Rail opened The Pain and the Itch so closely on the heels of Artist Repertory Theatre’s God of Carnage. Both plays take a satirical look at upper-middle-class white liberals; both plays have the audience cringing over the characters’ overly earnest parenting styles (the bourgie mom in Carnage encourages another couple to have a dialogue with their son after he hits another boy, the bourgie mom in Itch won’t let her daughter try on make-up because she’s worried about codifying gender roles), and their patronizing, white-guilt-ridden attitude toward poor people and people of color (the interiors of both swanky homes are decorated with African masks). And yet (and I realize it’s a little unfair to compare the two entirely distinct productions), The Pain and the Itch doesn’t benefit from as taut a script as The God of Carnage, nor the audacious slapstick that frequently pushed The God of Carnage’s audience into uproarious laughter.
That’s harsh criticism, considering that I quite enjoyed Third Rail’s production, directed by Slayden Scott Yarbrough. The acting and plotting is solid and the set (designed by Sean O’Skea) is exquisite and—here’s a point for 3rd Rail—more intriguing than ART’s. Where Carnage gave us only an elegant (and well-designed) living room, the set of Itch is a full slice of a 70’s-style well-to-do-home, complete with living room, dining room, multiple entrances and exits, and elaborate furniture. There are walls inlaid with large white stones, luxurious leather couches, tall narrow inset windows with ivory drapes that match the walls, a staircase and even a cubby under the stairs! I’ve never seen such a grand set constructed in the Winningstad. (Also—holy stagecraft! At a certain point, snow gently falls in the background! It is so evocative and lovely that everyone in the audience murmured when it began. Every theater in town should do this always. I will never get sick of it. You know how, like, 5 years ago, everyone was involving water in their productions? This season, it’s snow. I’m calling it now. And yes I realize it’s just pieces of shiny stuff and good lighting (thanks to Don Crossley))
Back to the plot; when the play begins, married couple Kelly and Clay (Valerie Stevens and Damon Kupper)—the afore-mentioned guilty white liberals and the owners of the swanky abode—are entertaining a Middle Eastern man named Mr. Hadid (played with unusual quietude by the always-engaging John San Nicholas). Kelly and Clay start to tell Hadid a story about a recent evening—a Thanksgiving dinner at their house—and as they tell it, the lights and music change, and the Thanksgiving evening plays out in front of the audience. The narrative frequently switches between the “past” and “present” evenings--a conceit this production carries off elegantly. The change in music and lighting isn’t too brash to be jarring, nor is it so subtle that the audience becomes confused as to which evening we’re watching.
Most of the play is focused on the Thanksgiving evening, which plays like a fairly recognizable family dramedy. New characters arrive—Clay’s dotty mother, Carol (Jacklyn Maddux), his arrogant brother Cash (Duffy Epstein) and the brother’s (Eastern European, ridiculously hot) girlfriend, Kalina (Amy Beth Frankel) as well as the couple’s young daughter Kalya (the unstudied, adorable actress with few lines but a lot of stage time is oddly uncredited) and infant. (And this is a pretty silly quibble—but I find naming everyone in the cast—other than the outsider—with “k” or k-sounding “c” names—and most with “l” sounds within them—to be a dumb and pointless choice on the playwright’s part.)
Marital discord is revealed, old family rivalries flare up, some characters drink too much, and many laughs are provoked, usually at the expense of the well-meaning but generally insufferable characters. As the play continues, mysterious hints are dropped, Hadid’s presence becomes increasingly significant, and the secrets throbbing under the surface begin to reveal themselves. These mysteries are unraveled with great craft--while the secrets revealed are sometimes juicy, sometimes shocking, they always feel in-keeping with the characters and the information that’s already been revealed. It’s deeply satisfying for an audience members to discover a secret they realize they already half-knew (at least for this audience member: other patrons may have guessed the play’s secrets before they were disclosed, but my revelations were timed exactly in-keeping with the playwright’s intentions).
And I’ve said, the performances are solid, each of the actors bringing texture and depth to characters deliberately written as tropes: the cynical plastic surgeon, the PBS-watching liberal grandmother, etc. Among those strong performances, Damon Kupper’s characterization of Clay is particularly resonant. In many ways, he is the most infuriating character in a cast of infuriating characters—he has no sense of humor, he can be insufferably self-righteous (still whining about his brother stealing his hot wheels when they were children), and he whirs himself into physical frenzies, bordering on tantrums. And yet, by the play’s end, he is the only character (other than Mr. Hadid, who is more catalyst than character), truly experiencing the ramifications of the actions that have unfolded. It was an incredible feeling for me to have for a character—even while it was clear that he was mostly mourning the wrongs done to him, even while I continued to dislike him in his smug self-absorption, Kupper transmitted Clay’s pain so acutely that I felt it in my chest.
There’s a whole host of politics going on in this play—it very self-consciously looks at a privilege-denying white family who watches PBS and feels really, really bad that they can’t understand the language of their maid. But there is something a little too safely smug in this viewpoint—I felt it a little when I was watching God of Carnage too—every time we laugh at the characters, I feel like we, the audience, gets to feel superior because we are not so anxious about race relations, we are more aware of our privilege, we haven’t fallen into the paradox of the perfect parent. There’s something a little too comfortable in that distance; I think a more precise satire wouldn’t allow the audience to wriggle away from the needle of invective quite so easily, or leave the theater feeling happily convinced how unlike those people we are. In the end, I forgave God of Carnage its smugness because I was so exhilarated from having taken the ride. And while I thoroughly enjoyed Pain and the Itch, well, I can’t quite say the same.
Summary: Good production values; solid acting; fantastic naturalistic set (WITH gently falling snow); precise plotting; realistic-sounding accents, I can’t believe I didn’t mention the reference(s) to the little girl’s vulva, a stand-out performance from Damon Kupper, it’s fun to laugh smugly at white upper-class liberals but also feels kind of cheap, and I liked The God of Carnage better (sorry).
That’s harsh criticism, considering that I quite enjoyed Third Rail’s production, directed by Slayden Scott Yarbrough. The acting and plotting is solid and the set (designed by Sean O’Skea) is exquisite and—here’s a point for 3rd Rail—more intriguing than ART’s. Where Carnage gave us only an elegant (and well-designed) living room, the set of Itch is a full slice of a 70’s-style well-to-do-home, complete with living room, dining room, multiple entrances and exits, and elaborate furniture. There are walls inlaid with large white stones, luxurious leather couches, tall narrow inset windows with ivory drapes that match the walls, a staircase and even a cubby under the stairs! I’ve never seen such a grand set constructed in the Winningstad. (Also—holy stagecraft! At a certain point, snow gently falls in the background! It is so evocative and lovely that everyone in the audience murmured when it began. Every theater in town should do this always. I will never get sick of it. You know how, like, 5 years ago, everyone was involving water in their productions? This season, it’s snow. I’m calling it now. And yes I realize it’s just pieces of shiny stuff and good lighting (thanks to Don Crossley))
Back to the plot; when the play begins, married couple Kelly and Clay (Valerie Stevens and Damon Kupper)—the afore-mentioned guilty white liberals and the owners of the swanky abode—are entertaining a Middle Eastern man named Mr. Hadid (played with unusual quietude by the always-engaging John San Nicholas). Kelly and Clay start to tell Hadid a story about a recent evening—a Thanksgiving dinner at their house—and as they tell it, the lights and music change, and the Thanksgiving evening plays out in front of the audience. The narrative frequently switches between the “past” and “present” evenings--a conceit this production carries off elegantly. The change in music and lighting isn’t too brash to be jarring, nor is it so subtle that the audience becomes confused as to which evening we’re watching.
Most of the play is focused on the Thanksgiving evening, which plays like a fairly recognizable family dramedy. New characters arrive—Clay’s dotty mother, Carol (Jacklyn Maddux), his arrogant brother Cash (Duffy Epstein) and the brother’s (Eastern European, ridiculously hot) girlfriend, Kalina (Amy Beth Frankel) as well as the couple’s young daughter Kalya (the unstudied, adorable actress with few lines but a lot of stage time is oddly uncredited) and infant. (And this is a pretty silly quibble—but I find naming everyone in the cast—other than the outsider—with “k” or k-sounding “c” names—and most with “l” sounds within them—to be a dumb and pointless choice on the playwright’s part.)
Marital discord is revealed, old family rivalries flare up, some characters drink too much, and many laughs are provoked, usually at the expense of the well-meaning but generally insufferable characters. As the play continues, mysterious hints are dropped, Hadid’s presence becomes increasingly significant, and the secrets throbbing under the surface begin to reveal themselves. These mysteries are unraveled with great craft--while the secrets revealed are sometimes juicy, sometimes shocking, they always feel in-keeping with the characters and the information that’s already been revealed. It’s deeply satisfying for an audience members to discover a secret they realize they already half-knew (at least for this audience member: other patrons may have guessed the play’s secrets before they were disclosed, but my revelations were timed exactly in-keeping with the playwright’s intentions).
And I’ve said, the performances are solid, each of the actors bringing texture and depth to characters deliberately written as tropes: the cynical plastic surgeon, the PBS-watching liberal grandmother, etc. Among those strong performances, Damon Kupper’s characterization of Clay is particularly resonant. In many ways, he is the most infuriating character in a cast of infuriating characters—he has no sense of humor, he can be insufferably self-righteous (still whining about his brother stealing his hot wheels when they were children), and he whirs himself into physical frenzies, bordering on tantrums. And yet, by the play’s end, he is the only character (other than Mr. Hadid, who is more catalyst than character), truly experiencing the ramifications of the actions that have unfolded. It was an incredible feeling for me to have for a character—even while it was clear that he was mostly mourning the wrongs done to him, even while I continued to dislike him in his smug self-absorption, Kupper transmitted Clay’s pain so acutely that I felt it in my chest.
There’s a whole host of politics going on in this play—it very self-consciously looks at a privilege-denying white family who watches PBS and feels really, really bad that they can’t understand the language of their maid. But there is something a little too safely smug in this viewpoint—I felt it a little when I was watching God of Carnage too—every time we laugh at the characters, I feel like we, the audience, gets to feel superior because we are not so anxious about race relations, we are more aware of our privilege, we haven’t fallen into the paradox of the perfect parent. There’s something a little too comfortable in that distance; I think a more precise satire wouldn’t allow the audience to wriggle away from the needle of invective quite so easily, or leave the theater feeling happily convinced how unlike those people we are. In the end, I forgave God of Carnage its smugness because I was so exhilarated from having taken the ride. And while I thoroughly enjoyed Pain and the Itch, well, I can’t quite say the same.
Summary: Good production values; solid acting; fantastic naturalistic set (WITH gently falling snow); precise plotting; realistic-sounding accents, I can’t believe I didn’t mention the reference(s) to the little girl’s vulva, a stand-out performance from Damon Kupper, it’s fun to laugh smugly at white upper-class liberals but also feels kind of cheap, and I liked The God of Carnage better (sorry).
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