Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Kate Douglas’s speculative new play THE APIARY is a thoughtful look into human ethics and mortality

• By drediman
• February 14, 2024
• No Comments

Last night, Kate Douglas’s new play The Apiary opened Off-Broadway at the Tony Kiser Theater courtesy of Second Stage’s Next Stage Festival. Set in the not too distant future in the year 2046, Douglas’s speculative play depicts a world in an acccelerating downward spiral, particularly as embodied by the worldwide extinction of bees and the ecological benefits they provide. However, in an unnamed underfunded lab, three female researchers may have just stumbled upon a potential way to nurture back the world’s population of bees – but at what consequence (no spoilers here)?

In an impressive professional playwriting debut, Douglas has written a thoughtful meditation on mortality and human ethics, as well as the fragility of the world at large. What’s refreshing about The Apiary is the fact that the playwright doesn’t hit its audience over the head with prescriptive messages or a specific points of view (a frustrating feature of many a contemporary play). Instead, it simply lays out – in elegantly succinct scenes that cast no judgments – characters who are faced with deeply human predicaments. As much as I admire the play, there’s no getting around that it’s a slight piece. At just over an hour, it barely has the time to fully flesh outs its characters. But that’s part of its allure I guess – like the great Caryl Churchill’s compact plays, The Apiary is an illuminating, finely-etched gem that asks you to lean into its exploration of the limits of human behavior.

The Second Stage production has been given a pitch perfect staging by director Kate Whoriskey (perhaps best known to New York theatergoers for having directed the excellent Broadway production of Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s), who gives Douglas’s play an artful platform from which to spool out its clear-eyed thoughts. The performances across the board are superb, giving the play subtle subtext and dramatic heft to fill out its slight frame. The cast includes Taylor Schilling as an overbearing lab manager, Carmen M. Herlihy as an irrepressibly upbeat researcher, April Matthis as a quietly ruthless interloper, and dancer Stephanie Crousillat as the menacing theatrical representation of the subject of their desperate attention.

RECOMMENDED

THE APIARY
Off-Broadway, Play
Second Stage Theater at the Tony Kiser Theater
1 hour, 10 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 3