In the confident and virtuosic hands of leading ladies Sarah Rudinoff and Barbara Dirickson, Lisa Kron’s Well, a “solo play with others,” that is not not a play about Lisa and her mother Ann, is an absolute victory of storytelling about storytelling and theatre about theatre. Want to see a rehearsal gone out of control and get deep inside what being well really means? Get your tickets soon, because the Rep has a hit on its hands.
Rudinoff, as storyteller/solo performer Lisa Kron, and Dirickson, as Lisa’s mother Ann Kron, haunt the stage as though it was their home, and we (the sold out audience) are the (surprise!) extravagantly large group of houseguests interrupting mom and daughter’s conversation about Lisa’s new play. As Lisa argues, cajoles, and tolerates Ann’s interruptions, she is trying to make it clear to her Mom that she is writing a new play that ISN’T a play, and that is it NOT about their relationship. It’s about sickness, and who gets well and who doesn’t, Lisa defends, and it’s not about them. It’s not about how Lisa’s mother has been sick her whole life, plagued by allergies that are nearly killing her. It’s not about how Lisa was once so sick she was taken out of high school and hospitalized for weeks in an allergy ward. Got the idea? Well is about how Lisa’s mother forged an integrated neighborhood in Lansing Michigan in the 60’s and by doing so, healed the people inside, and maybe even Lisa. Or is it?
Lisa comes right out to the edge of the stage, to the sharp tip of a giant arrow etched into the floor directing her towards us, to tell us that her mother is sick, and basically hasn’t left her chair in decades. Designer G. W. Skip Mercier’s set-a downstage corner devoted to the excesses of Ann’s hoarding and the armchair she never leaves, and the rest a seemingly open, neutral theatrical construction zone, eventually surprises as well. Revealing the settings demanded by the play, the design conjures effortlessly the Krons’ home and yard, the allergy unit of the hospital, the meeting room of the neighborhood association. That is, until the actors begin to rebel and refuse to move the furniture.
Well, the play that is not a play, is about sickness and health, but Lisa insists, it is not about Ann still being sick and Lisa getting healed. Okay then, what is this show about? Maybe that is not the right question to ask. Maybe we should ask, how does this show work?
Well is a solo play much in the genre of the award-winning theatre for which writer/performer Lisa Kron is acclaimed: Her autobiographical solos include 101 Humiliating Stories, which started at the WOW cafe on East 4th Street and, 2.5 Minute Ride, the astonishing work about her father, a holocaust survivor who, though blind, loved roller coasters. Well is “A solo play, but one that requires other people. It’s a whole new thing,” Lisa stridently claims. Nothing is what it seems, and this is what makes great theatre.
The Rep’s Artistic Director Braden Abraham has cast Reginald Andre Jackson, Chantal DeGroat, Liz McCarthy, Adrian LaTourelle and the young star-is-born, Emma Blessing, to inhabit the required settings of Lisa’s (not a)play-in-process. Each and every actor is delightful. As characters in the allergy ward, members of the neighborhood association, the nine-year-old meangirl Lisa didn’t want in her script but who showed up anyway, and when playing themselves, the ensemble is pitch-perfect with priceless comic turns. The actors rebel when Lisa’s play isn’t working, and her scene choices don’t seem authentic. More and more the actors, as themselves, are drawn to Ann’s side of the stage and to Ann. Eventually, the ensemble, and even the “actor playing Ann,” Barbara Dirickson, pull the ultimate coup de thêatre on Lisa Kron.
Whether the play is about a white Jewish family led by Ann, a Jewish convert, choosing to integrate and organize in a black Lansing neighborhood, or about how Lisa moved to New York and found her wellness, or about how Ann Kron lives in a lazy boy rocker, that’ll be up to you.
What I can tell you here, is the night belongs to Rudinoff and Dirickson. These two great ladies of the theatre are from decidedly different generations in this world, but onstage, they are family. Rudinoff’s Lisa seems altogether the creator of the world she is struggling mightily to make in front of us—she testifies to us moment by moment at the tip of her arrow. Dirickson is triumphant in her return to Seattle to play Ann Kron, and indeed, herself. Every curl of Dirickson’s finger, wink of her eye, and painful, audible yelp as she struggles to climb the stairs of Ann Kron’s pain are vividly alive. I’ve no doubt that every single performance will be different, as Rudinoff and Dirickson are so in the moment that a wall of the stage could and might fall over, and for them, it is only an opportunity to battle for their territory, acceptance, and yes, their health. Lisa Kron, one of the Five Lesbian Brothers, Obie award winner, Tony award-winning writer of the best new musical of 2015 Fun Home (in Seattle later this spring), and compassionate member of the American Theatre community, would be proud of this production indeed. Look for her in the audience–oh never mind, she is being channeled by Sarah Rudinoff.
Well; by Lisa Kron. At the Seattle Rep through March 5. Hurry. Seattlerep.com.