New Haven Theater Company
George Kulp, Margaret Mann, and Trevor Williams.
Near the beginning of the second act, Mary Swanson, who is very pregnant, is visiting with her doctor.
“There’s a problem,” the doctor says. Mary braces herself. The doctor rechecks his files.
“No, sorry. There’s no problem. That’s Swenson. You’re Swanson. Sorry. Now, we did some more tests on your little man. Everything looks very good.”
The checkup proceeds, with the doctor waxing philosophical about parenting and child-rearing, the mysteries of life, even as he makes it clear that he’s very busy and doesn’t have as much time to talk with her as he’d like. He’s interrupted by a call from that other mother, Swenson, the one who’s going to get some bad news. The doctor says he’ll call her back. After a few more questions, Mary thanks the doctor and leaves. The doctor looks over his paperwork again.
“Now, Swenson, Swenson … Swenson or Swanson?” He checks his paperwork one more time. Swenson. One vowel away. Ahhhh. Eeee. Owwww.”
Will Eno’s Middletown, a riff on and homage to Thorton Wilder’s Our Town and a chance for Eno to unfurl conversation after exquisitely strange and wonderful conversation among his characters, is like its forebear a long meditation on the fragility of existence, explored by examining the lives of the people in a small town and a bit of the history of the town itself. It’s very often funny and sometimes very sad, and like Eno’s The Realistic Joneses, which premiered at Yale in 2012, shows why Eno in play after play is making his mark on American theater.
The production is also a testament to the New Haven Theater Company’s own daring in putting on an ambitious play that would be pretty easy to screw up. Eno’s jokes — and line by line, there are a lot of them — rely on a sense of cosmic deadpan, and in Middletown, the characters are in on the punchlines more than they usually are in a comedy. Moreover, Eno’s elaboration on Wilder’s quest to find meaning in everyday life is point out that language, the tool we use to try to construct that meaning, begins to come apart the harder we try to work it. Middletown is full of large and small misunderstandings that add up to a big point: How can we even contemplate trying to find the meaning of our existence when we have trouble expressing our feelings for one another, or for that matter, even asking for directions? Eno mines that question for humor and quiet tragedy, all while working within the slightly folksy idiom of mythic small-town America.
Chrissy Gardner, Mann, and Steve Scarpa.
Director Peter Chenot’s decision to play everything straight proves wise. Chrissy Gardner and Steve Scarpa anchor the searching emotions of the play in their roles as Mary Swanson, new to town with an absent husband, and John Dodge, born in Middletown but never quite finding his place in it. In their guileless, lived-in performances, Gardner and Scarpa reveal the quiet sadness in their characters. Swanson and Dodge are two people who know from the start that they probably won’t connect as strongly as either of them wants, though they can’t deny the spark that passes between them. The ensemble cast that surrounds them — Chaz Carmon, Megan Chenot, Erich Greene, George Kulp, Margaret Mann, Aly Miller, J. Kevin Smith, John Watson, and Trevor Williams — playing cops and mechanics, librarians and nurses, and even an astronaut — make their characters as dignified as they are enigmatic, to one another and sometimes to themselves. A scene of violence, in which Kulp’s cop chokes Williams’s mechanic while delivering a lecture, at the beginning is played with a banal matter-of-factness that renders it desperate and chilling. A death scene near the end is heartbreaking in its simplicity. One minute, someone’s breathing. The next, he’s not. It makes Middletown a quietly questing play, bringing out the endless search each character is on, looking for meaning in their lives, in the universe, in their town, and in each word they speak, even as drains need unclogging, and people are born and dying all around them.
Middletown runs at the New Haven Theater Company, 839 Chapel St. May 4, 5, and 6, at 8 p.m. Click here for tickets and more information.