THE HANGOVER REPORT – Gabby Beans captivates in JONAH, Rachel Bonds’ slippery meditation on trauma and abuse

Gabby Beans and Samuel Henry Levine in Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Jonah by Rachel Bonds at the Laura Pels Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus).

Last night, Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Jonah by Rachel Bonds opened Off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre. Starring an utterly captivating Gabby Beans (who all but stole the show in Lincoln Center Theater’s recent Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth), the world premiere play tells the time-collapsing story of an enigmatic young woman named Ana and her spiked relationships with the various boys/men in her life.

As written, the play is structured as an unpredictable parade of fractured scenes that create a puzzle for audience members to piece together. But the more you think about Jonah, the more slippery — and sadder — it registers, particularly with respect to blurring the line between reality and fantasy (both in terms of inducing pleasure and acting as a defense mechanism). The fact that the adult Ana is a writer with a simultaneously fraught and fertile imagination only contributes to the play’s dissonance. But no matter how you interpret it, Bonds’ play is an acutely reactive play about abuse and trauma. Especially compelling is the work’s examination of desire and the intrinsic connection between our bodies and one’s mental and emotional well-being.

The Roundabout production has been directed by Danya Tamor, who does well to maintain an air of mystery about the play. Even when you think you get it, Taymor’s austere staging — which is largely set in the same sterile bedroom set — prompts you to second guess yourself. In the central role of Ana, Beans is simply stunning, giving a prismatic performance that reveals dizzying layers as the play unfolds. The rest of the cast (Samuel J. Levine, John Zdrojeski, and Hagan Oliveras) give strikingly disparate types of performances. Particularly memorable is Levine, whose menacing/sympathetic portrayal as Ana’s unhinged stepbrother really got under my skin.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

JONAH
Off-Broadway, Play
Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre
1 hour, 45 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 10

Categories: Off-Broadway, Theater

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