Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – In the intensely personal SHHHH, Clare Barron fearlessly stares down her complicated relationship with physical intimacy

• By drediman
• February 1, 2022
• No Comments

Last night, Clare Barron’s fascinating new play Shhhh opened Off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2. I’ve long been a fan of the playwright ever since catching her emotionally searing 2014 play You Got Older (her subsequent works include I’ll Never Love Again and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Dance Nation, each of which continues to also reside vividly in my memory), and I’ve been eager to re-engage with her deeply personal semi-autobiographical works. In her unapologetically clear-eyed new work, Ms. Barron fearlessly stares down her complicated relationship with sex, violence, and her body – particularly as a woman.

In a series of of slippery, intensely alive scenes, Ms. Barron – who also directs and stars in her play – gives us a brooding outline of her love-hate relationship with physical intimacy. Although the play’s meandering, unpredictible scenes collectively don’t amount to anything obviously meaningful, Ms. Barron nonetheless has created a world that’s viscerally seductive despite its often repulsive imagery and circumstances. The fact that she rarely lets us in to reveal her underlying thoughts can mean one of two things – either Ms. Barron is intentionally keeping us out of the inner sanctum (which would make the play frustratingly opaque), or maybe she just doesn’t quite know what she’s feeling herself. I’d like to think it’s the latter, which would therefore mean that her play is in fact a frighteningly real exorcism of sorts – one to which she’s invited us, the audience, to partake in.

Which leads us to Ms. Barron’s ritualistic staging, which lends itself to cathartic release as befits an exorcism. In each of her capacities in Shhhh, Ms. Barron is unfazed by going in directions that can potentially – and will likely – disturb and/or cause discomfort with their extreme and graphic depictions of intimacy. The play’s sextet of actors are superb, delivering performances that are both strikingly idiosyncratic and brutally authentic. Aside from actress Constance Shulman’s distinctly affected (and mesmerizing) speech patterns, their work rarely registers as acting – which is quite an achievement, especially coming from a theater critic who sees as much as I do.

RECOMMENDED

SHHHH
Off-Broadway, Play
Atlantic Theater Company / Atlantic Stage 2
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through February 20