Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Lincoln Center Theater’s fall offerings: Sarah Ruhl’s BECKY NURSE OF SALEM and Julia May Jonas’s YOUR OWN PERSONAL EXEGESIS

• By drediman
• December 12, 2022
• No Comments

This past weekend, I attended both of Lincoln Center Theater’s fall Off-Broadway offerings. Fascinatingly, both imagine personal traumas through the lens of organized religion and history, respectively. As always, here are my thoughts on these thought provoking new plays.

BECKY NURSE OF SALEM
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater
Through December 31

First up at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater is Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem (RECOMMENDED). Ms. Ruhl is not one to shy away from fantastical flights of fancy, and her latest work – which tells the turbulent story of Becky Nurse, an opioid-addicted middle-aged descendant of one of the women notoriously accused of during the Salem Witch Trials – most certainly fits the same mold. Feisty Tony-winner Deirdre O’Connell portrays Becky Nurse with the the same kind of uncompromising commitment that has made her a favorite amongst more experimental theater-makers (she won the coveted Tony for her meticulous lip-syncing work in the title role of Lucas Hnath’s Dana H.). The actress does her best to bring shape and urgency to Ms. Ruhl’s quirky but unruly play, especially in the play’s hallucinatory second act, during which Becky finds herself jailed for breaking and entering a Salem Witch Trials museum (where she was a former employee) and drug possession. As she struggles through severe withdrawal symptoms, she falls in and out of consciousness, half envisioning herself accused of witchcraft in imagined courtroom scenes set in 1692. As she battles her demons, she painfully reclaims her story from the clutches of her traumatic family legacy and years of drug abuse.

YOUR OWN PERSONAL EXEGESIS
Lincoln Center Theater at the Claire Tow Theater
Through December 31

No less messy yet fascinating is another Lincoln Center Theater production, Julia May Jonas’s new play Your Own Personal Exegesis (RECOMMENDED), which is playing a few floors above the Mitzi E. Newhouse at the rooftop level Claire Tow Theater. Set largely at a progressive church in New Jersey, the new play tells the story of a high school Christian youth group, wherein teenagers navigate their raging hormones and respective personal issues at home. There’s much to commend about the Ms. Jonas’s adventurous play, from its unorthodox structure (which his modeled after a church service), to its occasional passages of ecstatic and exciting playwriting that intermingle the sacred, profane, and mundane. That being said, the play also has a tendency to go off in the proverbial ledge (e.g., one of the high schoolers gradually turns into a bird for no apparent reason), resulting in a few scenes that register more as bizarre rather than thought-provoking. That being said, the well-appointed LCT3 production (designed by Brett J. Banakis) is beautifully directed by Annie Tippe, who gives the work an appropriately surreal bent. The young cast is convincing in their portrayals of developing young adults, in all their insecurities and unfiltered emotions. As the youth group leader, the reliable Hannah Cabell gives a slippery performance – at once menacing and wholesome – that got under my skin.