Review: A Woman Body’s Changes Before Her Own Eyes in Daphne

According to ancient myth, the nymph Daphne was divinely transformed into a laurel tree to save her from the sexual pursuit of the god Apollo. That story seems to be the symbolic jumping-off point for Renae Simone Jarrett’s play Daphne, a production of LCT3, which features a protagonist whose body becomes foreign to her as her skin gradually becomes covered with what appears to be tree bark.

I say “appears to be” because it’s tough to be certain about anything in Jarrett’s dreamlike play, which cryptically examines a woman’s experience with her evolving self. Scenes blend into each other and swaths of time pass in an instant; characters appear and oddly disappear; a baby is delivered from a kitchen cabinet. Despite some engaging stage effects that keep our attention (a noisy, ravenous bird remains caged and hidden from view by a large blanket, but why?), director Sarah Hughes allows Daphne and the actors to plod along humorlessly, gradually sapping any desire we might have had to hack into the play’s mysteries.

Things start out spookily enough with Daphne (Jasmine Batchelor) quietly descending a dark staircase holding a candle (Stacey Derosier’s murky lighting sets the show’s ghostly tone), while the solitary patter of rain fills the room (haunting sound design by Sadah Espii Proctor). She’s recently moved into the secluded country house of her partner, Winona (Keilly McQuail), and left behind her city friends — new mother Piper (Jeena Yi) and confidante Wendy (lively performance by Naomi Lorrain), whose exuberantly colored jacket (costumes by Oana Botez) designates her as the “fun” friend. Daphne, however, has preferred to hide herself away in isolated places since she was a child, so she’s fine in her faraway home.

But Daphne becomes a stranger in her own skin after a small injury to her finger begins to spread to her entire body like a virulent infection. Winona barely notices the change as she becomes suspicious that Daphne is being unfaithful to her with Piper and Wendy, who pay her occasional visits. Winona’s behavior becomes even more erratic after she confesses that their neighbor (Denise Burse), who may or may not be a witch, finds a way into Winona’s dreams. Daphne wonders whether she should retreat even further into her own personal darkness or try to find a way to comprehend what is happening to her body and her relationship with a woman who clearly does not understand her.

Jarrett infuses a lot of themes into this shapeshifting plot — too many to deal with adequately in a 90-minute play. Among them are Daphne’s and Winona’s confusion over their own bodies (Winona is unaware that women carry eggs); the pressures of motherhood (Piper suddenly falls out a window, never to be seen again, leaving Daphne with a baby who also disappears); the challenges of aging alone; and the unspoken tensions of interracial relationships. Jarrett threads these ideas throughout the play, but they never receive enough treatment to create a recognizable pattern in her patchwork plot.

That, of course, might be Jarrett’s intent, since the play does feel like a dream in which nothing coheres or makes logical sense for long. Maruti Evans’s set design clues us into the surreal nature of the proceedings from the beginning with ridiculously large autumnal leaves lining every inch of the floors and walls, foreshadowing Daphne’s transformation. But Jarrett has also tried to infuse some other much-needed lighthearted humor into the action that unfortunately fails to take root. At best, a gag about tree-bark ice cream gets muted chuckles.

That’s a shame because Jarrett’s story does have the potential to captivate with its weirdness, complexity, and surprising tenderness if only it were treated with a lighter touch. In its present state, however, Daphne comes off as a wooden affair.