Apologies to Maya Angelou, but when a play tells you what it is, believe it the first time.
In the opening few minutes of Liz Duffy Adams’ new play, Dear Alien, we meet a misanthropic, morally slippery, agoraphobic advice columnist. Hungover, oddly wearing a rumpled suit (even though he hasn’t left his humble apartment for months) and swigging much hair of the dog, he acknowledges that drinking thusly is cliché. But what is the evergreen of a cliché if it doesn’t hold truth, he proudly blusters as though gifting us with revelation.
To be clear, Adams lays the line on us without even the barest of winks.
It’s a telling primer for the many shopworn elements to come.
First up, the macro plot – a writer locked in his room with one day left to finish a book he hasn’t even started, much to the ignorance of his editor. The protagonist – Dear Alien – the pen name of the tough talking/fed up with the idiocy of humanity advice columnist tasked with turning his columns into said book. The framing – seven new letters picked at random in the hopes of finding something original. Of course, acted out/read by other actors (two in this case) to bring some life to the stage. The stakes – the threat of some kind of nebulous death or suicide if Dear Alien can’t get his shit together and write/be inspired/finish the book.
Even the genre is a little tired – a 4th wall-breaking existential comedy. Or it would have been a comedy if Adams hadn’t decided to put Dear Alien on a soapbox, pontificating not just a word salad but rather a whole all-you-can-eat word salad bar.
It’s interesting to note here that Dear Alien isn’t the only advice columnist play we’ve seen this season. Hell, it’s not even the only advice columnist play we’ve seen this spring. Over at Stages, we just saw Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed’s book-turned-play about her days doling out anonymous advice. Using the same framing of the interaction between the columnist and the letter writer, Strayed leads her audience in a meditation on grief and loss. Exercise your empathy or perish, she demands.
Not so for Adams. Tears are not her goal. If Tiny Beautiful Things is a tear-jerker, Dear Alien is a lecture worker. Addressing the questions posed in each of the seven letters, Dear Alien launches into diatribes on love, the right to happiness, suffering, the perils of the modern world, the morality of inequity, the lack of kindness and online trolling.
All substantially decent notions to mine. And there are some thought-provoking moments that have us question our own human compass. But as the sermons pile up, one can’t help but think these were mini essays Adams had written and was dying to place. Regrettably, this reverse engineering means her ideas don’t feel organic to the play; instead, the play feels forced-written to showcase her ideas.
It’s so very fortunate then that this world premiere production has Shelley Butler providing a strong directorial hand and a cast that easily glosses over the play’s shortcomings.
As Dear Alien, Dylan Godwin does the heavy lifting, alternatively flitting about the apartment, growling at the world and throwing himself a pity party. There’s a bit of Noel Coward’s Garry Essendine in Godwin’s silk robe, prancing and past bad boy behavior, and some Fran Lebowitz in his no-nonsense/tough love reader responses.
Godwin manages it all expertly. Do we sense he’s as annoyed with the constant smarmy asides and philosophical tangents as we are? If so, he hides it well. Godwin expertly unites his character’s dissonant traits and keeps us engaged for the play’s 90 minutes.
Likewise, Brandon Hearnsberger and Melissa Molano bring their talents to the letter writers. For the most part, neither one is given any real meat to chew on. Their character’s problems are merely launching pads for Dear Alien’s monologues. But kudos must be given to Molano, who brilliantly performs the show’s one true comedic scene – a narcissistic frenemy trying to figure out how to dump her sweet and struggling best friend.
More of this, please, we think.
If all this seems overly critical of Adams’ effort, let’s channel Dear Alien and call it tough love instead. Just like her advice columnist knows his readers can do better, so too do we know Adams’ heights. After all, it was she who gifted us with her 2022 two-hander drama, Born with Teeth, about a speculative meeting between playwrights Kit Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Like Dear Alien, it was a work developed via the Alley All New pipeline with a world premiere production on the Alley Newhouse Stage. Unlike Dear Alien, though, the award-winning Born with Teeth had, well, teeth.
So what happened to the wit and originality that Adams previously showcased? While she is undoubtedly a writer with valuable insights about the human condition and our potential, Dear Alien rarely presents new perspectives. Most of her commentary—like the assertion that online trolls are simply unhappy people acting out—echoes familiar ideas, lacking the inventiveness that made Born with Teeth so impressive.
The tough-love mantra asserts: you may hate our guts, but we do this out of love. There’s a good play inside the ideas that drive Dear Alien; we hope one day to see and love it.
Dear Alien runs through May 31 at Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $45-$83.
