Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Christopher Chen’s cool, puzzle-like THE HEADLANDS doubles as unassuming whodunit and astute psychological thriller

• By drediman
• March 2, 2020
• No Comments

The company of LCT3’s production of “The Headlands” by Christopher Chen at the Clair Tow Theater. Photo by Kyle Froman.

It’s March, which means that the New York theater season is officially in full swing, as evidenced by the recent and upcoming string of back-to-back openings, particularly Off-Broadway. Among them is Chrisopher Chen’s The Headlands, which recently premiered at the Claire Tow Theatre, courtesy of Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 programming. Set in San Francisco, Mr. Chen’s new play tells the story of a self-described amateur sleuth who sets out to figure out the truth about his father’s murder upon the recent death of his mother.

I was a big fan of the playwright’s 2017 play Caught and its fractured, illusory construction. If not as wholly compelling as that previous work, The Headlands nonetheless boasts a similarly intricate, puzzle-like structure. In his latest play, Mr. Chen uses the unassuming whodunit framework to convey the anatomy of a mind in emotional distress. The playwright has ambitiously assembled a labyrinth of non-linear scenes – complete with secret chambers and dead ends – in order to theatricalize the unconscious, repressing mechanisms of human memory. Impressively, most of the time he succeeds. For example, scenes are repeated (not exactly always in the same form) throughout the play — each iteration implying a different meaning — to increasingly disorienting effect. Even if the characters never fully emerge from their vague outlines (I suspect intentionally) and the play’s ending fails to fully satisfy (no doublers here), I still had plenty to chew on well after the curtain came down on what ends up being an intellectually astute psychological thriller.

For me, however, the real star of the production is the supremely stylish staging by Knud Adams, a talented young director to keep an eye on based on his impressive recent body of work. His cool, carefully-calibrated work on The Headlands is no exception. Most notably, Mr. Knud slyly incorporates immersive video projections to deliver on the noir promised by the play, as well as highlight the subjective nature of perception itself. An appealing mostly-Asian American cast supply performances of seductive restraint, giving just enough information and emotional context to tantalize the audience. All in all, thoughtful, sophisticated theater-making, this.

RECOMMENDED

THE HEADLANDS
Off-Broadway, Play
Lincoln Center Theater / Claire Tow Theater
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 22