This: A Look at Human Frailty

This, presented by Epic Theatre Company, is a haunting meditation on human frailty. Playwright Melissa James Gibson created a story about the intertwined lives of a group of middle-aged New Yorkers who have a variety of unfulfilled needs.

Jane (Emily Lewis) is recovering from the death of her husband. She is a teacher and has a daughter named Maude. Tom (Robert C. Reynolds) and Marrell (MJ Daly) are the unhappily married parents of an infant. Alan (Christopher Verleger) is a gay man who is an expert at remembering things in public. They have all been friends since college.

Tom and Marrell throw a party at their apartment one night. Jean-Pierre (Motif‘s Terry Shea) is the handsome French doctor who Tom and Marrell hope will date Jane.

The strength of Gibson’s script is that it can find the humor in the most tragic situations. Each character has unfulfilled longings.

Jane has never been able to let go of her late husband Roy. She keeps his ashes in a brown bag on top of her refrigerator and brings the bag to Tom and Marrell’s apartment, producing a darkly funny debate about the disposition of the ashes. Alan believes he is unattractive and unlikable and yearns for adventure to combat the boredom of his life. Tom faces his infatuation with Jane, while Marrell confronts the great distance between her sex life and the sex life she would like to have.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Lewis is steely and vulnerable as a woman trying to rebuild her shattered life. She finds consolation with her friends who are all enduring their own form of suffering. Daly and Reynolds also shine as a couple dealing with the stress of raising a baby amid a rocky relationship. Verleger displays expert comic timing and earns a lot of laughs as the pudgy aspiring star who wants to be the life of the party, but ends up shunted off to the side. Shea, is amusing when he reacts to the chaos erupting all around him.

Director Lara Hakeem has crafted a crisp and powerful 75-minute show that always captivates. The production design is bare bones — just a few couches and a makeshift bar. There are no elaborate sets to distract us from the heart of the story.

This shows that life doesn’t always go according to plan. Our hopes, our dreams and our frustrations often messily collide with those of others, and we have to sort through the emotional fallout. Despite her great tragedy, Jane  learns she is not alone in being unhappy. Her sometimes troubled interactions with the people in her life lead her to a type of catharsis at the play’s climax.

Gibson obviously has tremendous compassion for her characters, who all seek happiness but are unable to find the ways to get it. We walk away wondering if they will ever figure that out.

This is another triumph for Epic Theatre Company, maintaining its run of successes at staging intimate and quirky human dramas.

This runs through January 25. Theatre 82, 82 Rolfe Square, Cranston; artists-exchange.org/epictheatrecompany.html; 401.490.9475

Directed by Lara Hakeem

Stage Manager: Michael Shallcross
Assistant Director:  Kerry Giorgi

Sound Design: Terry Shea

Lighting Design: Robert C. Reynolds

Set Design: Lara Hakeem and Kerry Giorgi
Poster Design: Ashley Arnold

Featuring

Emily Lewis

Robert C. Reynolds

MJ Daly

Christopher Verleger

Terry Shea