Facing extinction
As the 1990s were reaching the midway point and the AIDS crisis was well into its second decade, Nicky Silver emerged with a string of plays – The Food Chain, Raised in Captivity, Fat Men in Skirts and Pterodactyls. Writing in a fiercely comic voice, Silver confronted the Black Death on its own absurdist playing field with Black Comedies so caustic they promised to long outlive the epidemic.
Pterodactyls, the 1993 breakthrough, won the Oppenheimer Award, Kesselring Award and Best Play nominations from the Drama Desk and Outer Critics’ Circle. That it endures is evidenced by two separate L.A. mountings in recent months. The second, an Athena Theatre production directed by Patrick Varon, continues through July 29 at the Stella Adler Theatre in Hollywood.
Though Varon’s staging falls short of showing the play’s full power, the Athena production offers a decent opportunity to again hear this still vibrant and exciting play.
Pterodactyls retains its value not because AIDS remains urgent but because Silver integrated it into the larger context of his story. AIDS here is a symptom of family and societal dysfunction. The Duncan family in Pterodactyls, living in abject denial, is representative of the larger culture. For failure to confront the reality of its own behavior, this family – and perhaps, by extension, the family unit itself – will face extinction. (Here the methods are alcoholism, depression, suicide, job loss and AIDS.) Nuclear families like the denying Duncans are doomed dinosaurs, Silver implies. In his subsequent 1995 comedy, Raised in Captivity, however, he offered hope for family survival in a new structure that adapts to change.
Silver’s black comedy is extreme in both regards: very funny and very dark. Getting both sides to play to maximum effect is challenging and takes an almost intuitive blend of the arch and the sublime.
Todd Duncan (Todd Kubrak), a man in his early 20s, is returning home after some years on his own. He is not the prodigal son, arriving with new appreciation for his family, but a mortally wounded victim of life, wandering in off the smoking battlefield of human indifference. HIV-positive, he has arrived to die among family. He quickly discovers, however, that the still-toxic environment in which he was raised has the effect of commuting his death sentence to life. Rather than wasting away, he becomes emboldened to act as conductor of the other characters' inevitable - if accelerated - demise.
His return coincides with the sudden marriage of his younger sister Emma (Veronique Ory), who has railroaded her compliant first boyfriend Tommy McKorckle (Ryan Baylor) into hasty union. Mother Grace (Gillian Doyle) and father (Christopher Bradley) continue their non-relationship much as it must have been when the children were young: They still treat their grown children as little kids and Dad continues to superimpose his own passions onto them. As the crazy carnival atmosphere of preparing for the wedding proceeds, Todd focuses on assembling a whopping metaphor buried in the backyard – the skeletal remains of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Todd Duncan is our guide into this world and Kubrak and Varon get off on the wrong foot during the brief overview of human history that begins the play. In a five-minute explanation that traces evolution from creation to contemporary New Jersey, Silver wants to establish that balanced tone. But actor and director go for laughs more overtly, with Kubrak showing concern about his audience’s reaction. He seems interested in entertaining us and apologizes for forgetting his notes. These qualities do not mesh with this shell-shocked young man, so beyond the opinion of others. The writing has enough absurd humor to land without the extra effort.
The rest of the characters, however, are meant to be ridiculous and needy. Where Todd is incapable of connecting because he’s embraced too much, the others just don't have it in them to relate. Not until Todd ushers them over the threshold, and exacts its price. The first scene after Todd’s introduction, in fact, is the best rendered of the comic scenes. In a giddy exchange, Ory and Baylor mindlessly prattle on like speakers for remote record players no one controls. Their ideas, feelings and desires are all outsourced safely beyond their consciousness or responsibility. We feel their phonograph needles lightly skating over the surface of every subject. It has the right pace and delivery.
Baylor, who has the most success in maintaining this quality, holds the effect until his seduction by Todd leads to his premature exit. Ory, on the other hand, wants her Emma to seek understanding. We see her character groping for meaning in what others say. This runs counter to the writing, in which she prefers to block things out. She doesn’t remember having a brother, and will pretend to be deaf when she doesn’t want to know something. Her time for understanding comes, and she gets a long time to savor it.
Gillian Doyle is also on the right track with the pivotal role of mother Grace. While she’s prone to work harder than she needs to, it is overall a successful turn. Christopher Bradley as the father, however, is almost always working too hard. A face etched with consternation, this father seems much too angry and concerned when he is more likely to be simply remote and detached, roused only by inappropriate attractions.
As the play darkens, the work eases and the performances find their tone. Kubrak eventually settles in, and by the closing scenes, when the temptation to entertain is gone, he and Doyle do their best work.
The design work is simple and solid. Merits to costumer Marina Toybina and Varon for keeping the apparel limited to a minimum, further 'typing' these characters and keeping them unreal. The set, with its absence of photographs, illustrations or books, belies the message of a family without a sense of history or perspective. Good work there by Stefan Depner, set, and Johnny Ryman, lights. John Bobek's sound design features swing era music, hearkening back to a time when, we believe, the family was a different animal.