Check it out

What: “Dying City”

When: 7 p.m. Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Aug. 12

Where: Capital Stage, 2215 J St., Sacramento

Tickets: $20-$32; (916) 995-5464, www.capstage.org

Christopher Shinn, a highly regarded playwright in his late 30s, studied at the Tisch School in New York; his plays have been presented at Lincoln Center Theater and the Manhattan Theater Club, which often mount new plays that are contenders for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. He also wrote an adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen classic “Hedda Gabler,” which ran on Broadway. Serious stuff.

Capital Stage in Sacramento, which specializes in edgier, literary fare, is presenting Shinn’s provocativelytitled drama “Dying City,” which (sure enough) was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2008. And they’ve bravely scheduled the production for a late July/early August run, challenging the conventional wisdom that audiences prefer comedy on hot summer nights.

This is, apparently, the first time one of Shinn’s plays has been staged in the Sacramento area. And several things quickly become apparent. The man is clearly fond of American classics — one character in “Dying City” is an actor appearing in a New York revival of Eugene O’Neill’s monumental drama about a family coming apart at the seams, “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” and, of course, the same fate awaits the characters in Shinn’s play.

(Extra points to Enterprise readers who are aware that O’Neill, usually considered an East Coast figure, actually wrote “Long Day’s Journey into Night” in nearby Danville, a 75-minute drive from Davis. And the playwright’s home there, Tao House, is now the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site, which is open for tours by appointment. If you admire O’Neill’s plays and you’ve never seen the house, you should go!)

More to the point, Shinn is artistically rooted in the tradition of American classics created by O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Edward Albee (who’s still cranky after all these years, and gave a memorable talk at UC Davis about 13 years ago). Like them, Shinn seems drawn to dramas in which families experience the grim consequences of bad decisions, closely held secrets, self-deception, character flaws and personal betrayal. As a 21st-century writer, Shinn also works in frank language that would have been off-limits in O’Neill’s or Miller’s heyday.

“Dying City” is a three-character play, with a cast of two. Attractive Lyndsy Kail plays Kelly, a young therapist. Chad Deverman plays both halves of a set of identical twins: Craig is a military man who’s seen duty in Iraq, he’s married to Kelly, and he has died in the Middle East prior to the play’s opening scene. Peter is the actor, and he’s gay; his unexpected appearance at Kelly’s well-appointed New York apartment at the beginning of the play leads off a sequence of scenes that move backward and forward through time.

Gradually, through a series of personal disclosures and recollected events, some very unhappy revelations about the past are laid bare. Shinn, like O’Neill, likes to write plays about families that have skeletons in the closet, and in “Dying City,” those old bones get rattled pretty hard.

Kail, who was good in the Oscar Wilde comedy-of-manners “The Importance of Being Earnest” at the Sacramento Theatre Company some time back, operates on an entirely different wave length here. She covers a range from Kelly as a recently married woman thinking about having a baby through Kelly as a widow staring at the television, shell-shocked by the bluntly delivered news about her husband’s passing, and what she learns about him afterward.

Deverman has the unusual challenge of playing brothers who look alike, but are quite different. To accomplish this, he periodically steps off stage and then re-emerges, wearing a different shirt, or eyeglasses. There are also subtle differences as well as shared aspects in Craig’s and Peter’s mannerisms. Twins, after all, spend so much of their early lives together — and are compared with each other so often by their teachers, friends and others — that they develop a kind of bond that transcends the usual sibling relationship. All in all, it’s a remarkable performance on Deverman’s part.

Director Jonathan Williams manages the comings and goings of the three characters (and the back-and-forth movement in time) quite effectively. The play is short (less than 90 minutes, no intermission) but it doesn’t feel rushed or clipped.

The set, by Steve Decker, consists of Kelly’s living room, with a view that references the New York City skyline. And there’s potent dialog about the day the World Trade Center came down so very, very suddenly — clearly a metaphor for what happens in the personal lives of these characters. The lighting, by Ron Madonia, leaves portions of the stage in the shadows in some scenes. When you’re home alone, you know where things are, and don’t need to hit the switch.

“Dying City” is not the sort of show in which the milk of human kindness flows, nor are redemption and forgiveness near at hand. But if your taste runs toward serious, searing drama that doesn’t spare the gritty details, this worthy production of a most interesting play by a young writer of considerable note will be right up your alley.

dying city3W

Lyndsy Kail, as Kelly, tries to reach her husband Craig, played by Chad Deverman, in Capital Stage’s production of “Dying City.” Courtesy photo

dying city2W

Chad Deverman portrays brother-in-law Peter to Lyndsy Kail’s Kelly in Capital Stage’s production of “Dying City,” presented through Aug. 12. Courtesy photo

dying city1W

Lyndsy Kail is Kelly and Chad Deverman plays her husband Craig in Capital Stage’s production of “Dying City,” presented through Aug. 12 at 2215 J St. in Sacramento.

Comments

comments