Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – At Soho Rep, Kate Tarker’s spiked play MONTAG confounds and seduces every step of the way

• By drediman
• October 28, 2022
• No Comments

Earlier this week at the Walkerspace, I attended a performance of Soho Rep’s production of Montag by Kate Tarker. The new play is a vintage offering of Soho Rep, a tiny downtown theater company that over the years has really impressed me with the rigor and audacity of its output (e.g., Jackie Sibblies Drury‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview, Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ stunning An Octoroon). Even with its slippery premise — Ms. Tarker’s work commences murkily and doesn’t get any clearer as the play unfolds — Montag seduces as much as it confounds.

The setting is clear, however — the play begins with two women who have mutually decided to hide themselves away in a dark, cramped basement for an extended period of time, but it’s unclear as to the reason why. Although the piece is drunk on words, it all fails to concretely amount to very much at all. This intended lack of clarity may admittedly frustrate some, but if experience the play simply on a visceral level, you’ll likely be captivated by the way the playwright vividly uses familiar genres (e.g., psychological thriller, horror, domestic drama) to depict the two women’s aggressive cat-and-mouse relationship. Indeed, it’s all fun and games, until it’s not. But is it? A late visit by none other than Death (and an opera singer!) puts the whole affair into a stylistic spin that awed me with its audacity and had my head spinning. Such are the sly tricks played by Ms. Tarker’s spiked play.

The Soho Rep production has been directed by Dustin Wills, who summons an atmosphere thick with dread and menace. Throughout, the acting in this mostly two-hander tends towards intensity over nuance. But that’s by design, I think. As foils for each other, actresses Nadine Malouf and Ariana Venturi’s dangerous banter up both their characters’ anxiety levels, which eventually reach breaking points. Special mention must also go to composer Daniel Schlosberg, whose original music adds an element of poetry to the play’s considerable mysteries.

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MONTAG
Off-Broadway, Play
Soho Rep
1 hour, 15 minutes (without an intermission)
Through No