In Hillel Mitelpunkt’s The Accident, a self-involved man, somewhat drunk, hits and kills a Chinese immigrant at about eighty miles per hour. Then, with his passenger, an equally self-involved and even more drunk man, they decide that their work is too important to have it interrupted by the inconvenience of a homicide investigation, and so they leave. Afterward, their friends and family become involved in their little secret, and use the information to their own noxious advantages as the immigrant’s killing remains unsolved.
Greg Kalleres’ Wrecked, a world premiere now playing at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, starts much the same way but then veers off in a wildly different direction and becomes a raucous comedy, before returning to deliver a gut punch – two of them, actually – at the end.
Victoria (Julia Coffey) and John (Chris Thorn) are back in their lovely home (lovely set by Jesse Dreikosen) and out of the dark Indianapolis night. But something is wrong. They hit something. Maybe it was a deer, or – yes, it was definitely a dog. A stay. A depressed stray, perhaps, with suicidal tendencies. Or – no, definitely not a moose. No moose in Indianapolis. And definitely not a human being.
The stench of guilt and fear hangs over them like the smell of an overripe diaper, and no amount of verbal Febreze will clear it up. The tension ratchets up until the doorbell rings with a portentousness so ridiculous that the room explodes with laughter. It is their friend Lynn (Megan Bartle). She has just broken up with her boyfriend. And she wants a drink.
She is soon followed by her former amore, Alex (Tom Coiner), who demands to know why Lynn walked out on their conversation and what it means to their relationship. Alex doesn’t know that they broke up, which is emblematic of a connection founded on misunderstanding and swimming in cross-currents. Suddenly, and to John’s horror, Victoria gets an idea: since Lynn idealizes John and Victoria and especially their relationship, she, Victoria, will explain how John and Victoria communicate so that Lynn and Alex can communicate just like them.
It turns out that John and Vicky live within a tight web of rules. Some of them are hilarious, and obviously tailored to address previous catastrophes. (“All ironic coffee mugs must be kept at the office,” John explains. “No ordering wall art online while drinking.”) But the essence of their rules is that they must have narratives about their lives which mirror each other. Thus, Vicky’s minor witticism about matching couches to lawyers becomes the touchstone of their lives.
Thus, they hit a dog.
The cringeworthy dissection of the two relationships together is rich fodder for comedy, and director Shelly Butler’s cast wrings every drop out of it. Bartle and Coiner are perfect in the match made in hell, their characters’ every deficiency scraping against each other to ignite belly laughs. Lynn treats Vicky’s inexpert ministrations as though she had wandered onto Dr. Phil’s set. Alex does too, to a profoundly different effect.
If this were a 1950s comedy, we would call Vicky at “ditz” but in Coffey’s hands she is not so, although her cliché-ridden commentary, pronounced with the fervor of an acolyte reading scriptures, provides much of the laughter. We can see the terror behind her embrace of her beloved rules, and understand that that terror stretches beyond the accident which happened just before the play’s opening. That more recent terror, by the way, intrudes in unmistakable ways – a police siren; the monstrous clanking of the world’s largest garage door opener – during the most comic moments of the story. Its intrusive quality is so great that it lifts John from the world of the play and plops him into the middle of the terror, before our eyes. Thorn is spot-on in conveying that transmutation.
Wrecked at Contemporary American Theater Festival closes July 28, 2019. Details and tickets
Comedy begetting terror; terror laced with comedy – Kalleres has written a hell of a story, and the CATF has put together a cast, crew and director with the chops to pull it off. Viewed objectively, the story seems improbable, but Kalleres has found an internal logic to justify almost every event, and the cast plays his story with absolute conviction. The only unnatural moment – and it’s a big one – involves an incident about four-fifths of the way through the play involving a large stuffed giraffe which John and Vicky brought home from Africa after a visit. Coiner does his best to make it seem plausible, but Kalleres hasn’t set it up properly, and the incident seems not just unmotivated but a cheap (and unneeded) trick to get our attention.
I haven’t told you about the best part of the play, and I won’t, either. You’ll have to see it, but I will tell you that it’s the very last line. In an interview with CATF’s Sharon Anderson, Kalleres talks about a shared narrative as a defense against loneliness. “I’m always scared that I’m experiencing as different relationship than my wife is experiencing,” he says. “That loneliness, that waking up one day and not recognizing that person, scares the hell out of me.”
But in Wrecked, Kalleres resolutely gives us the other side. As Robert Mueller and many others have shown us, the truth is sometimes lonely. But it’s still the truth.
Wrecked by Greg Kalleres, directed by Shelly Butler, assisted by Charlotte La Nasa . Featuring Julia Coffey, Chris Thorn, Megan Bartle and Tom Coiner . Scenic design: Jesse Dreikosen . Costume design: Beth Goldenberg . Sound design: David Remedios . Technical Director: Jared Sorenson . Stage Manager: Lori M. Doyle, assisted by Aubrey Sirtautas . Produced by the Contemporary American Theater Festival . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
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