Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2023 continues with yearning works about human connection: Abe Koogler’s DEEP BLUE SOUND and Liza Birkenmeier’s GRIEF HOTEL

• By drediman
• June 26, 2023
• No Comments

Down at the Wild Project in the East Village, Clubbed Thumb’s essential annual Summerworks series has continued with a pair of yearning new plays on the topic of human connection (you can find my review of ruth tang’s Work Hard Have Fun Make History, the first entry of this summer’s series, here). Apropos for post-pandemic times, to say the least. Read on for my thoughts.

DEEP BLUE SOUND
Closed

Set in a small coastal town on a remote island, Abe Koogler’s Deep Blue Sound (RECOMMENDED) depicts the lives of several of the community’s denizens, along the way chronicling moments from the mundane to the momentous. Admittedly not much happens in the gentle, melancholic play, and were it not for the exquisite acting, the play could well have tested the patience of some theatergoers. Anchored by luminous Tony-winner Maryann Plunkett – who brings the same kind of nuance to her cancer-riddled character here as she did in her acclaimed longstanding appearances in Richard Nelson’s Apple Family and The Gabriels plays – Koogler’s comprehensive study of a community in action highlights the fragility of society when you take into account the fraught human relationships that make it up. Stylishly presented like a glorified reading (think the recent Broadway revival of A Doll’s House starring Jessica Chastain), director Arin Arbus imbues the work with an overarching sense that the play’s characters are on the brink of big changes in their modes of existence, both individually and as a community.

GRIEF HOTEL
Through July 1

Following Deep Blue Sea at the Wild Project was Liza Birkenmeier’s Grief Hotel (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), the third and final offering of this year’s Summerworks series. The two plays share several commonalities, one of which is their dissection of the nature and circumstances of human connection. In Birkenmeier’s decidedly darker (and funnier) play, the characters (most of whom have known each other since high school) begin in figurative isolation, even if most of them are in relationships. Only through grief and trauma, the the playwright seems to be suggesting, are her characters motivated to truly connect and engage with each. Moving stealthily between time, space, and perspectives, Grief House maintains an air of cool and mystery throughout its compact and surreal 80-minutes, which may confound theatergoers looking for a less artful and more straightforward type of storytelling. Like Arin Arbus’s work on Deep Blue Sea, director Tara Ahmadinejad gives her staging an austere quality that comes across more as stylish than threadbare. And unsuprising for a Summerworks mounting, the production is pristinely acted and designed (kudos again to dots). Particularly caustic in her navigation of the anxieties of modern living is the wonderful Ana Nogueira as the sensual character Winn.