Playwright: Darren Callahan. At: Polarity Ensemble at Josephinum Academy, 1500 N. Bell. Phone: 800-838-3006; $15. Runs through: March 22
The givens of the play—the basic information provided by it—are that it has four scenes taking place on three different continents and in the air. The scenes offer characters of different races and vastly different socio-economic strata united by a deja vu sense that each is a different person in a different place at the same time as he is here/now. Each scene contains violence ranging from stabbings in two scenes to apparent plane crashes. And each key character has a vision of seeing—or being inside—an all-white airplane that others cannot see. Beyond that, author Darren Callahan connects very few dots in a work that is offered as surreal. In the sense that it plays out as an irrational dreamscape, The White Airplane is surreal. But it isn’t a work of surrealism in the sense of the formal artistic movement. It is, perhaps, more non sequitur than surreal.
Truth is, I found my interest—which was keen at first—steadily waning as the play progressed because: (a) Callahan doesn’t provide any characters one can care about and (b) he simply doesn’t offer enough information for viewers to make sense of the puzzle. Is the white airplane real? Does it crash in the first and fourth scenes? Is it a harbinger of death? Is soul transposition possible? Does any of it matter to me? By offering a conundrum, but not extracting even a spiritual or emotional value from it, the play leaves its audiences twisting in the wind. Callahan shifts radically in tone from scene to scene, from the opening moments of British sex farce to a sober ending that combines The Twilight Zone with Sartre. It is, perhaps, too much style and too little information. I think the play wants to be a comedy; it certainly should be a comedy, but I don’t think that’s what Callahan intends.
OK, so you get the idea that The White Airplane is quirky and I can’t figure it out. Fair enough. Director Susan Padveen puts a generally capable cast of six (four principals and two extras) through their paces in snappy fashion, but with only two dimensions to play (forget the space-time continuum for a moment) it’s difficult to access the competence of the acting. It’s energetic, sometimes funny, sometimes merely blustery. To the show’s credit, stereotypes are avoided in Scene 2, in which non-Asians play Asians. Before the show and between scenes, the audience is greeted with air travel trappings which are engaging and fun. And scenic designer Jason Epperson has labored with some wit—if not always with complete success—to create four distinct settings in a difficult space with little stage technology to help.
Is The White Airplane ambitious, pretentious or merely silly? You decide.