Peninsula

There are plays in which the characters move with marked deliberation, pausing heavily between their sentences and often between their words, speaking in non sequiturs or in barely acceptable sequiturs. In such plays, the unspoken intention of the author right from the molasses-slow beginning is to whip the audience into shape with a strong dose of gravitas. Unfortunately, such pretentiousness almost never amounts to a hill of beans.

That emphatically applies to Peninsula, written and directed by Madelyn Kent. The play is set in an unspecified country that’s suffering under a repressed government. Explosions are heard every so often. The citizens, inured to the blasts, merely cower for a few moments and then continue to go about their daily business. In this dreary environment, a Husband (David Chandler) and his wife (Marielle Heller) try to make a go of their deteriorating marriage. During their travails, they do some shopping. She goes off to fill his prescription, to buy a new hat, and possibly to have trysts with the shopkeepers; he picks up some soft-leather shoes for an acquaintance whose politics he may dislike. (All of the salespersons are played by Louis Cancelmi). Intermittently, Husband and Woman — as the wife is known — drop into a church where a priest (Tim Cummings) who’s becoming disenchanted with his calling officiates.

The logo for the Soho Rep production is a drawing of a red-hued shape that conjures Manhattan Island and/or a parched tongue. The veiled reference to Manhattan is understandable, if Kent believes that’s the way the city (and the country) is headed; the tongue idea is less cogent, unless it’s intended to suggest that the citizens of this benighted place speak in tongues. They certainly seem to do so in Peninsula. Maybe Kent is stating that, under these circumstances, language is cheapened — which is not at all an inaccurate observation. But she does no favors for anyone, including herself, when her characters say things like “I am not ashameds” or “I want to sleeps” or “You are a small onion.”

Harold Pinter and Ariel Dorfman have been able to make something of this kind of report on shadowy oppression. Pinter, as is well known, known how to write effective silences and pauses into his plays. However, according to a recent interview with Kent, she’s not consciously influenced by Pinter or Dorfman but by lessons learned from an improvisational group of Japanese women with whom she has spent time. Of Peninsula, the author further states that “the connective tissue between language and character has been damaged. It’s slack, so we can see the separation. But in this separation there’s also a sense of light — an ability, for example, for the central character of the woman to come to a real sense of self-knowledge, beyond depending on the other characters. In the end, she is no longer in the story, but there is a sense that she will reinsert herself.” (If this clears up anything for anybody, good; it does little for me.)

No blame can be placed on the actors, because they only do what Kent has instructed. Neither should blame be attached to the ingenious set designer Narelle Sissons, who has erected a wall of wooden doors that reveal the play’s locales when opened or lifted. Lighting designer Matt Frey helps establish the requisite downcast moods. Sound designer Kenta Nagai keeps the explosions popping and must also be responsible for a delightful piano interlude that crops up towards the middle of the enigmatic shenanigans.

Although Peninsula runs a mere 90 minutes without intermission, it seems to go on as long as The Ring Cycle. As a pal and I were exiting the theater, he said, “Do you realize that, if they’d taken out all the pauses, we would have been out of here an hour ago?” He was right; Peninsula is so wrong.