The Irish literary critic Vivian Mercier once wrote that “Waiting for Godot” is “a play in which nothing happens, twice.” Domenica Feraud’s “Someone Spectacular,” with its own missing Godot-like figure, is a play in which nothing happens, six times.
The nothing, in this case, refers mainly to the plot: Six members of a grief support group sit in a circle and wait for their counselor, Beth, to show up. Ten minutes pass. Then 20. Someone halfheartedly suggests they play a game; someone else speculates that Beth might have died, which gets a lungless laugh from a group member. Another belatedly wonders aloud: Should they even be talking without the mediating presence of their counselor?
A modest proposal from Julian (Shakur Tolliver), who is grieving his aunt’s death, to start breathing exercises is roundly ignored, as is an idea to vote for a “Replacement Beth.” Nelle (Alison Cimmet), who is allergic to the idea of wasting time, proposes a vote on whether to proceed with the meeting sans Beth or disband. After some wrangling — “No one here is qualified to lead a session,” gripes the youngest attendee, Jude (Delia Cunningham) — votes are tallied. The yeas outnumber the nays.
So: Progress?
Not a snowflake’s chance in hell. In this meticulously crafted play, partly inspired by the death of Feraud’s mother, each attempt to begin the meeting is quickly derailed.
When the matronly Evelyn (Gamze Ceylan), who has a worrisome cough, sensibly suggests a group check-in, she’s promptly dismissed. Only Jude, who is mourning a miscarriage, takes the invitation seriously; her “grief is at a 5 today. Maybe a 6. It gets worse at night, I’m not sure why.” Yet she’s immediately upstaged by Lily (Ana Cruz Kayne, flop sweatingly fine), a retired actress who thinks she killed her mom. Lily’s grief is at a 10, she says, because it’s always at a 10: “Every day I wake up shocked I haven’t killed myself. Happy?”
Under Tatiana Pandiani’s light-touch direction, the play, which recently opened at the Signature Center, effectively sends up the notion that group therapy members are expected to make a burnt offering of their traumas. But even more than this, the increasingly malcontent members here superbly demonstrate what the British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion called the utter futility of conversation in group settings.
For most of its 90 minutes, “Someone Spectacular” gives the impression of being stuck in a rinse-and-repeat cycle of recrimination, albeit a very funny one. At one point, Nelle even goes so far as to invoke a “hierarchy” of grief. Beneath the glib statement, lurks a serious question: What is it about our culture that encourages someone like Nelle to feel entitled to adjudicate someone else’s grief worthiness? The question connects with another idea Feraud seems intent in exploring, though never in a didactic way: the performative nature of mourning and of therapy sessions. If grief can lead people to go about in a kind of drag — to disguise antisocial feelings, for instance — the members of this grief group slowly peel away the layers of artifice that each of them has piled up. Is this cruelty or kindness?
Near the end, the play makes an abrupt shift; the oppressively bright lights flicker and three characters find themselves in a new arrangement. Without giving too much away, there is a suggestion that they have crossed into another realm where, suddenly, they understand one another. Instead of dwelling in this liminal world, however, Feraud ferries us back to the mundane one. Someone soon initiates another round of the game they were playing in the beginning. Those in purgatory will know the feeling: Nothing will ever change.
Someone Spectacular
Through Sept. 7 at the Signature Center, Manhattan; someonespectacularplay.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
Read More: Compassion Is in Short Supply at This Grief Support Group
