We’re all backstage with Mary, inside the real green room of Theater 154. (The building’s traditional theater is cleverly used too.) The backstage environment, made even more intimate by the production’s 35-seat audience cap, adds multisensory layers to the show. When Mary puts on a fresh pot of coffee in anticipation of her haggard cast — Colin (Jack DiFalco), Eileen (Mallory Portnoy) and Robert (Lou Liberatore) — we not only smell the pungent brew but also the gurgling of the coffee maker cuts into the dialogue. The sound of the water roiling effectively hints at something more sinister to come.
Spahn and the director, Knud Adams, have a couple of these adrenaline-inducing tricks up their sleeves, including offstage thuds and the rustling of mice gnawing on something in the vents (sound design by Peter Mills Weiss). But the show is at its best when it lets the green room serve as a microcosm for these characters’ anxieties: Colin’s breakup with his girlfriend, Claire; Eileen’s stress over her mother being in the audience; and Robert’s laments about his horrible day. These interesting bits of character development have a meta impact, influencing how the Uptown players are preparing for their performance, and how we, the audience, come to view the Uptown players. These moments prove Spahn’s ability to weave personality into the high-concept narrative fabric, so it’s mind-boggling that he doesn’t do it more frequently.
Colin, playing a version of Wozniak here, is frustratingly one-dimensional. Hints of his instability are scattered throughout — Eileen drolly mentions he is on “80 medications,” Colin dismisses conversation about his parents, and he struggles with his finances — but why such superficial touches for a play so free to delve into the recesses of a killer’s mind?
The female characters also suffer from a lack of depth. Mary is a model caricature of servitude: nurse to Eileen, timekeeper for Robert, patient therapist to Colin, maid to all. There’s a suggestion of a longer-term relationship with Colin, but we never witness a reciprocal bond, only a dysfunctional dynamic where Mary is more like Colin’s caretaker than his friend. (That Mary is twice Colin’s age and, in this production, is played by a Black woman and Colin is played by a white man adds an undeniable and tired layer of racial cliché.) Eileen’s ambitions are more fleshed out, and Portnoy works overtime as the show’s primary comic relief. Her character’s histrionics, however, rarely transcend the slightly insufferable trope of a big fish actor in a small community theater pond. Even the unseen Claire only exists as a muse for Colin’s crimes.
As the narrative progresses, the insidiousness of Colin’s actions are revealed, but his motives remain unclear. The show’s impact is also hazy because “Inspired by True Events” is not quite funny enough for dark comedy, not puzzling enough for a whodunit, nor gripping enough to sit neatly into compelling true crime.
Inspired by True Events
Through Aug. 4 at Theater 154, Manhattan; ootbtheatrics.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
Read More: ‘Inspired by True Events’ Review: True Crime Thriller Riddled With Clichés
