Playwright: Dan Aibel. At: American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron Ave. Tickets: 773-409-4125; ATCweb.org; $20-$38. Runs through: June 15
It's far too soon to judge the work of Will Davis, completing his first full season as American Theater Company's artistic director, but one may offer an impression.
Based upon Men on Boats in January and this world premiere, Davis prefers plays driven by language or physical action rather than structure or character delineation. Indeed, Davis's bio notes his focus "on physically adventurous new work," which Men on Boats impressively was. Nonetheless, citing my Jan. 18 review, the artificial dialogue and intentional cartoon-like acting "prevent audiences from ever discerning who these men really are." I have a similar issue with T., although its acrobatics are verbal vs. physical: I don't understand the characters or why I should care about them.
Playwright Dan Aibel provides little exposition and takes no time to establish relationships. Yes, you quickly understand that Jeff ( Tyler Ravelson ) and T ( Leah Raidt ) are married, and eventually that Al ( Guy Massey ) is T's father, and you easily understand that Joanne ( Kelli Simpkins ) is T's coach. T, you see, is Tonya Harding, the disgraced American champion figure skater of the late 1980s-early 1990s. But Jeff's gopher, Shawn ( Nate Whelden ), remains an unknown. What's his relationship to Jeff and what are his motives? Who's Jeff, for that matter, beyond a nearly-psychotic control freak? Most central of all, who's T? Why is she attracted to a controlling abuser like Jeff? Why is she an outsider within the rarified figure skating world? You'll understand if you study Tonya Harding's story elsewhere, but you won't understand from this playwhich offers only unexplained hintsand that's a problem.
There are many other plays, films, books and a rock opera about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan ( rival skater and infamous victim of Harding and hubbie ) that offer deeper character development and biographical information, so why explore this material again? It's difficult for me to understand the continuing fascination with Hardinga shabby footnote in the history of ambition, bad behavior, cowardice and deceitwhen a world-class model of ambition, bad behavior, cowardice and deceit sits in the White House, a clown-like menace to democracy.
The company does valiant work under director Margot Bordelon, whose staging is efficiently spare in design ( Andrew Boyce ) and movement. Ravelson and Whelden perfectly deliver feverish rapid-fire dialogue composed of idioms, vulgarities and clichés but it's intentionally unhuman. Raidt and Simpkins share the play's only quiet, compassionate moments, among them a scene in which T applies make-up to Joanne. You sympathize most with Coach Joanne, but it's not her play.
My advice to Will Davis is to look for characters first and only then for the physically and/or verbally adventurous. It is possible to have both.