With apologies to the fine cast, the real star of Ken Urban's new play is the scenic design by Lee Savage. Consisting of three white panels covered in irregular, converging black lines, the set suggests a series of cubist spider webs — or when lit from behind, an abstract stained-glass window in a sinister church of the unconscious. Few Off-Off-Broadway productions in recent memory have explored the visual potential of the black box more effectively.
The play itself is a bit of a head scratcher, having little or nothing to do with the private lives of Eskimos but very much to do with the inner life of Marvin (Michael Tisdale), a depressed office worker who blames himself for his sister's death in a train accident. When he loses his cell phone, to which he seems unnaturally attached, Marvin calls his own number and reaches a mysterious woman who inhabits a possibly metaphorical arctic wasteland. They develop a psychologically intense pas de deux, which Marvin finds much more compelling than the day-to-day banality of work and marriage.
Urban and director Dylan McCullough have populated the stage with intriguing characters and evocative situations, but they wouldn't be any less intriguing if we understood how they related to one another. The play is neither abstract nor surrealist; although heavily stylized, it's rooted firmly enough in the real world to encourage the audience to make rational connections between Marvin's inner turmoil and his fanciful secret life of sexy Russian detectives and parka-clad mystery women. But why the arctic? Why does the detective's accent come and go? Why do characters interrupt their own lines with periodic bursts of high-speed gibberish? (These fits of robotspeak are apparently supposed to be spam messages, but that doesn't help.)
A play like this shouldn't give up all its mysteries, but there is still something to be said for basic coherence. Frustratingly, Urban doesn't meet us halfway.
Produced by the Committee Theatre Company
at the Linhart Theater @ 440 Studios, 440 Lafayette St., NYC.
Sept. 8-Oct. 1. Fri.-Mon., 8 p.m. (Additional performance Thu., Sept. 27, 8 p.m.)
(212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com.