The Small Things
Through March 9 at the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. (203) 432-1566, www.yalecabaret.org
Directed by Hugh Farrell and Emily Reilly. Costume Designer: Nikki Delhomme. Sound Designers: Palmer Hefferan and Tyler Kieffer. Dramaturg: Hugh Farrell. Percussionist: Victor Caccese. Stage Manager: Rob Chikar. Producer: Eric Gershman. Performed by Christopher Geary (Man) and Emily Reilly (Woman).
A small red curtain opens on a small proscenium-style set on a small stage stuck in the corner of the basement Cabaret space. There’s a big window on a small wall, bare-lightbulb footlights and two actors face-painted and dour as if they’d just escaped from the trashcans of Endgame. They sit in chairs and face front, never rising as they recite a story about a village culture which urges silence and respect on its citizenry by having people’s tongues removed.
It’s a numbing, nail-biting tale, which I kept losing the thread of. I was more fascinated by The Small Things’ abstractions: that compact playing area splashed by gray paint, the intense yet sedate playing style, the forced Irish accents and cackles. Deliberately off-putting yet friendly and inviting in its own meticulous way, The Small Things makes for a calm, creepy bout of late-night theater. I was lulled by its stark white-face pronouncements and steady rhythms. The matter-of-fact delivery masks a dire story of oppression and social submission.
Seemingly aware of its own power to sedate, the play provides its own wake-up calls and points of reflection with the abrupt chiming of alarm clocks. The whole production is controlled and runs like clockwork, one of the frozen grins behind the oration belonging to co-director Emily Reilly.
Enda Walsh has more topical works on his resume, such as the Internet-conscous Chatroom. Traditional-wise done the obligatory Christmas Carol adaptation, and also adapted Dostoevsky’s Brother Karamazov, the myth of Penelope & Odysseus and (easily his best-known work in the U.S.) the Broadway adaptation of the romantic film Once. The Small Things exists in a special small place in Walsh’s canon of over two dozen plays. It exists in a special small place in this current Cabaret season as well. There happens to have been a lot of wall-breaking confessionals in the Cabaret of late, plays which directly acknowledge and interact with the audience. With the one-two punch of last week’s surrealist-inspired The Bird Bath and now this Beckettian dual-monologue, I realize how much I’ve missed remote, expressionistic or abstract presentations in the space. The Small Things removed my tongue for just an hour, and I’m better for it.