Playwright: Susan Sontag
At: Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland
Phone: 773-384-0494; $20 ( Two-for-one on Thurs. )
Runs through: Feb. 17
By Jonathan Abarbanel
I don't have a clue what this play is about. Feminist author Susan Sontag's absurdist comedy concerns Alice James, sister of writers William and Henry James, a woman who suffered from classic 19th-century neurasthenia most of her life. Perhaps being fawned over by a family that could afford to keep her well as an invalid ( a logical inconsistency ) was Alice's way of drawing the attention of her father and four brothers, her mother having died young ) . Perhaps it was a way out of the clan's competitive intellectual brilliance: her father tells Alice that all his children are geniuses, and that she ranks number three among the five. Perhaps, in Electra complex-related identification, Dad's wooden leg stimulated Alice's psychosomatic inability to use her own legs. Sontag hints at all this and more, but clarifies nothing.
Her vehicle, however, is only 90 minutes long and is highly theatrical and visual, at least as staged by the eminent, mono-named directress Dado. Sontag audaciously borrows from Lewis Carroll for the play's central scene, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party as imagined by Alice James. In the Jamesian version, 19th-century transcendentalist and journalist Margaret Fuller hosts Alice, Emily Dickinson, Parsifal-legend temptress Kundry and Myrtha, the Queen of the Dead Virgins in the ballet, Giselle. Now there's a cheery group.
Besides a strong cast, who play as if it all made perfect sense, Alice in Bed boasts excellent scenic elements ( thanks to designer Ewelina Dobiesz ) , from the diamond-patterned floor to a grid work of bookshelves to wood ladders with missing rungs. The witty costumes ( by Karen Kawa ) suggest, but also skewer, Victorian propriety with theatrical flare. Some elements—such as Kundry's ankle-length lace-knit coat—are downright fetching. To these, Dado adds live cello accompaniment ( courtesy of Jenni Zohn ) , recorded music and a film sequence of wolves, insects, snakes and birds having highly sensual if not outright psychosexual connotations. The wolves are seen as Alice delivers a long monologue about Rome, a city she did not visit: Are they meant to suggest the she-wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus?
Hey, who knows? It's a collage of images and ideas and one can take from it many things. Certainly, at some level Sontag means to illuminate the power of mind over matter, since Alice is burdened with a poor body but a superior mind. Early on, the play also establishes a central question: Is it proper to take one's own life, owing to physical and/or emotional suffering? Rather than answer the question with 19th-century Judeo-Christian cant ( or 21st-century cant, for that matter ) , Sontag has a character reply, 'It is hard to save anyone, but that is what we desire.' Count on Trap Door to give us what no one else does.