"Brilliant" is a word to avoid. For one thing, it's generally an overstatement. Worse, it's worn out, robbed of its singularity by years of careless use. You might as well say "double plus good." But "The Strangerer," a new play from Theatre Oobleck, has in its double plus goodness such peculiar qualities (lightness, hardness, endless facets) that it could tempt that old word out of retirement. "Brilliant" should make you think of a gem—something that shines through cutting. "The Strangerer" is practically all sharp edge.
Set at the 2004 Presidential Foreign Policy debate, the play stars an unfailingly professional Jim Lehrer (Colm O'Reilly), a somnambulant John Kerry (playwright Mickle Maher) and this century's great absurdist anti-hero, George Bush (Guy Massey in a constant sweat.) Bush, who famously read a little Camus on vacation last year, has been conflated with the main character of The Stranger. He is in full-blown existential crisis, whole chapters of bleak French philosophy chopped in with his usual word salad. And, for reasons that he is immable to enticulate, he has decided to kill Jim Lehrer on national TV.
Massey is remarkable as Bush, combining a celebrity impression that wouldn't shame a network sketch show with wild-eye, fully committed, crazy-person acting. The president's ticks and twitches are there, along with the monkeyish "pensive" look and the snigger. Yet Massey throws himself at the part as if he's playing Raskalnikov. It's grievously funny, but it's no cheap shot.
As the Democratic nominee, Maher is bland smug, and nearly immobile (he also has the little Kerry smile down flat). He wants the public to know that he is fully committed to murdering Jim Lehrer, but takes issue with the President's choice of time and place. O'Reilly, an actor blessed with a consuming physical presence, underplays Jim Lehrer beautifully. It seems natural, in a dream-like way, for this man to continue moderating a debate that has dispensed with the "why" and "if" of his own murder, and proceeded straight to the "how."
The metaphor here is obvious, but in Maher's script it is neither heavy nor pat. Maher is a dexterous writer, and his scripts tend to have an unusual non-linearity. Instead of journeys, his characters make repeated sallies towards a single point, different approaches to an indefinable idea or moment. A graph of "The Strangerer" would look less like a hill with a climax on top than a poorly drawn flower with something unknown at the center. At the end of this freakish, perfect, hilarious play, it will seem as if the three people on stage have hardly moved or changed. But something will have happened to you.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
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