Apologies to Maya Angelou for riffing on her famous quote: when a playwright shows you who she is, believe it.
Of her new one-hour-ish play, The Imp, Houston artist Emily J Hynds tells us her dark comedy featuring two friends in conversation will posit both silly and complex questions, explore relationships and friendships and reach no conclusions.
It’s an accurate description of a show that feels more like strung-together musings than a holistic experience.
Antoine Culbreath and Katy Manning play two friends who’ve sequestered themselves in a room to chat. There’s snacks, a mysterious clipboard (more on that later) and he’s in clown makeup.
That’s about all the information Hynds will give us for some time, which is cool. There’s nothing more tedious than being spoon-fed in a play. It makes us lazy. Hynds is a master of withholding and trusting her audience will come along for the ride as she slowly plugs the holes for us.
Relationships are the first topic of discussion. She’s married; he isn’t.
“Getting married is a very radical act in our friend group,” he says kindly but with an edge he unveils in further dialogue. “I never thought of you as capable of that kind of love.”
Oof. Is it jealousy? Simple honesty? An attack? He’s nice enough about it and she’s not overly put off.
“How can you say that,” she asks, almost laughing. “It’s how I feel,” he responds.
It seems this is just the way these friends communicate. No conflict here.
The ensuing conversation’s meandering topics include behaving like a robot in relationships because feelings are messy, the idea of church vs The Church, questions of avenging death, guilt, a failed word association game, a vomit at the opera story and an assumption about moths that distracts for its incorrect science.
Mostly, he asks the questions and she muses. It feels lightly intrusive, like a therapist seeing a patient in the wild. Not exactly session mode, more like 20 questions that accomplish not much of anything.
Hynds’ dialogue is occasionally hyper-naturalistic; at times we can’t tell if the actors are flubbing and laughing about it or if that’s baked into the script. At other times, they speak in a hyper-stylized fashion.
“I’m doing an association thing now,” he says before tossing off a bunch of words. When it goes nowhere, he ends the game by declaring, “This isn’t as interesting as I thought it would be.”
We watch it all with confused interest. Hynds ideas about human interaction and self-containment are juicy at times. Even if they come to us as snippets without heft.
Both performers handle the material well and Hynds enhances the quirk with direction allowing for some lovely pauses and dead spaces.
But what is the point, we wonder? And why does Manning keep crossing off things on the clipboard after a discussion? Is it a cheat sheet? The performers are decidedly off-book. So, is it part of the show? Are we meant to think something of it?
The clown makeup, we come to learn, is because he’s just performed in an immersive play. One that she’s come to see, leaving her friends stranded outside while she spends over an hour talking with him.
Wait, is the conversation the actual immersive show? Is Hynds having a laugh at all of us? That would be kinda great. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The show is what it is, as Hynds has shown us from the start.
The Imp asks questions, explores some things and answers nothing.
We believe her. The question for us as the audience is whether this is enough.
The Imp continues through March 8 at Winter Street Studios, 2101 Winter Street, Suite B100. For tickets, visit Venmo (@GUSTHouston), PayPal (ejhynds@gmail.com), or cash at the door. $20.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
