The Jacksonian

With its Midwest premiere of Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian, Profiles Theatre drills into a Southern Gothic strewn with troubled characters navigating a confined, almost claustrophobic space. Sex, drugs, and violence are woven through a story full of seedy characters and dangerous situations, all of them festering in the titular Jackson, Mississippi hotel. Set in 1964, Henley’s plot centers on the decaying marriage of Bill Perch (Tim Curtis), a dentist with no business being anywhere near sharp instruments.

Time is out of joint as the nonlinear plot runs through the calendar between May and Christmas. In director Joe Jahraus’ staging, the mood is telegraphed in the opening moments by the hotel ice machine, a focal point of the production often lit in shades of sulphur red. Tellingly, those ice fumes match the bloodstains on Perch’s undershirt the first time we see him. It’s no spoiler to note there’s been a murder at the Jacksonian; we’re informed as much in the first scene by the rather obviously named Rosy Perch (Juliana Liscio), the acne-pocked adolescent daughter of Bill and his estranged wife, Susan (Rachel Sledd). Rosy’s our concierge for this weird and numbing journey, her monotone providing commentary and exposition as The Jacksonian zigzags between spring and the holidays.

Unfortunately, that journey isn’t one worth taking. Henley has penned a clutch of bizarre characters whose actions are beyond the pale of plausibility. Or at least that's how they’re played in the alternately wooden and over-the-top performances Jahraus gets from his cast. In a more effective play, the mystery surrounding the murder announced in that first scene would infuse the plot with suspense, as would Henley’s gradual revelations about Fred (Christian Isely), the skeevy bartender who always seems to be on duty, and Eva (Betsy Bowman), the Jacksonian’s marriage-minded waitress and chamber maid.

That pair’s oddball tendencies morph toward the edge of evil as details about Fred’s involvement in a gas station murder and Eva’s White Supremacist beliefs bubble to the surface. Evil, in this case, doesn’t mean interesting, because Henley’s dialogue is bizarre and detached to the point that it renders her characters inaccessible.

That feeling isn’t limited to Eva and Fred. The Perch family is similarly distant. As Rosy, Liscio’s monotone sounds like one of the windup dolls of the era. Curtis’ Perch is inscrutable and removed, even as his room turns into a crime scene. As the often distraught Susan Perch, Sledd has plenty of volume but little depth.

Katie-Bell Springmann’s set design tells a different story, however. The set is grounded in kitchen-sink realism – save for the hotel restaurant that is inexplicably located in Dr. Perch’s hotel room, a dining table complete with condiment dispensers at the foot of his bed. The visual cues that are supposed to clue the audience into when each scene takes place barely register. There’s a tiny crèche on the bar, and a Bonsai-size Christmas tree, both of which appear and disappear to indicate seasonal shifts in time. Unless you’ve seen the show before, these small tokens of the season aren’t enough to guide the audience.

But time isn’t the main problem here. It’s its authenticity, or rather, the lack of it. Nothing anyone does at the Jacksonian feels rooted in actual human behavior. Long before nitrous oxide and chloroform have fogged the proceedings and numbed the characters, the audience is apt to have checked out of The Jacksonian.