An actor once told me that the worst thing someone could say at the end of a show was, “sure looked like you were all having fun up there.” A compliment to hide whatever failings the speaker felt about the production. Politeness over truth.
But what if the very thing lacking in a show is the fun? If everything – the actors, sound, and lighting – feels a little flat. Like a party with no music.
In the case of 4th Wall’s production of Lucas Hnath’s, The Thin Place (Directed by Philip Lehl and Kim Tobin-Lehl), this dearth of oomph takes an otherwise spooky/kooky play and saps much of the thrill, chill, humor, and insight from the 90-minute piece. What we’re left with frankly is kind of a dragged-out bore.
Hnath’s ghost story centers around Hilda (Faith Fossett) a young, mousy, plain-spoken woman with anything but a plain life.
As narrator and participant in the story, Hilda holds court in one of the two armchairs on the otherwise bare set (Stephan Azizi’s design), never leaving its comforts as she relays her experience with what she calls, the thin place. That space between death and whatever lies beyond.
It’s a space Hilda learned to reach as a child when her grandmother, against her mother’s will, taught her psychic communication in the hopes they could communicate after her passing. Or perhaps Hilda didn’t learn anything at all. Maybe it was just luck that she could sometimes guess what her grandmother was thinking.
That doubt, her grandmother’s eventual death, and the mysterious disappearance of her mother leads Hilda to seek the help of Linda (Carolyn Johnson), a professional English medium who takes up residence in the other on-stage armchair.
Wowed by Linda’s demonstrated psychic abilities, Hilda befriends her and soon the pair are spending personal time together. But as much as Hilda presses Linda about her craft, Linda rebuffs, instead preferring to entertain with stories about her wildly dramatic family.
Up to this point, Hnath gives us lots to play with. There’s weird and wonderful metaphoric writing as when Hilda deadpans that the thin place is like imagining an octopus pressed up against the glass of an aquarium, except there is no glass, and there is no octopus.
There’s Linda’s outrageously funny story of her aunt unknowingly dragging her husband to death with her car as an act of misogynous revenge on his part.
Without spoiling one of the play’s most amusing and disturbing plot points, we also get a confession from Linda that greatly changes how we, if not Hilda, think of her.
Problem is, all these juicy nuggets Hnath offers up, get barely a reaction from the audience thanks to missed opportunities.
As Hilda, Fossett’s relative emotionless stance works just fine, but we need some quirk in her character to connect. Something to endear so that we find her essential lack of personality intriguing, instead of dull.
Johnson’s Linda gets a laugh or two with her occasional foul mouth and later digs at Americans, but low-hanging fruit aside, she seems unnecessarily constrained in her character.
Perhaps Johnson’s struggles with a lower-class English accent (iffy at best) kept her off kilter. Maybe, directors, Lehl and Tobin-Lehl decided to downsize Linda’s presence. Either way, it’s a mistake. Linda is the big, loud personality of Hnath’s play. The one that keeps us laughingly tuned in despite the weirdness, even during the seemingly overstuffed middle section of the play. To neuter Linda is to roll up the sails and not even check for the wind.
Hnath adds to the mix mid-way through the play, shifting focus but not theme. Hilda and Linda attend a house party with Linda’s affluent friends, political consultant Jerry (Philip Lehl) and Sylvia (Courtney Lomelo), Linda’s wealthy patron and perhaps occasional lover.
With Hilda remaining almost silent, content to listen, the trio drink and argue over moral, philosophical, and economic differences in the way they approach and affect the world.
On the surface, it can seem like a jarring shift away from Hnath’s central ghost story. A course you didn’t order in a meal that’s starting to go on too long. But listen closer and you’ll see this scene is just an expansion of Hnath’s exploration of belief and reality. Taking the ghost out of the story to see if it’s the scare that matters or the story itself.
It’s a tricky scene to make cohesive to be sure, but once again this production doesn’t help itself out. Lehl and Lomelo may argue over opposing morals but the fight feels limp and their characters inconsequential. Johnson continues to underplay her lines, robbing us of much-needed zing, and by the time Fossett
eventually speaks up, bringing the narrative back to the spooky side of town, it’s almost too late to care.
In truth, it’s a little mind-boggling how little we get from these four otherwise tremendously talented actors. None of them seem to be enjoying their roles or confidently leaning into the eerieness of the play. It’s also a surprise that a show begging for atmospheric sound and lighting as the final creepy scene unfolds offers up not much of either.
Not that it had to be a special effects extravaganza. In the show’s premiere at The Humana Festival, lighting and sound were minimal with moments of extreme tension and surprise. Here Christina Gianneli’s lighting design, in the climax, a deep red light meant to render the action on the stage otherworldly and difficult to see, just feels like a stoner’s basement.
Robert Leslie Meek’s sound, with occasional piano tinkling and static that might have been a mistake, took us out of the spooky atmosphere altogether. His final foreboding hum effects fare better but would have far greater impact with the volume turned increasingly way up.
4th Wall’s production aside, if you didn’t like this Hnath play, just wait a bit and it’s fairly certain the next one we’ll get in Houston will be a totally different kind of work.
Just think of his shows we’ve already seen in Houston. The Christians (Alley, 2016) about a megachurch’s influence on faith and A Doll’s House Part 2 (4th Wall 2021), a period piece play that picks up where Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House leaves off.
Hnath is one of our modern playwrights who is distinctly discontent to play in the same genre twice, nor does he have a signature type of storytelling. What he does have is an interest in belief and why and where we have it.
Religion in The Christians, what it means to be a feminist in A Doll’s House Part 2, and what lies just beyond death in The Thin Place.
“We see what we need to see,” says Linda about her paying clients. Let’s hope the next time we get the chance to witness what Hnath needs to show us, we’ll have a production we can better believe in.
The Thin Place continues to November 5 at Studio 101, 1824 Spring Street. For more information, call 832-767-4991 or visit 4thwalltheatre.com. $17-$53.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
