Even in a university setting, The Internationalist is not a play for the risk-averse.
We like that our college students are exposed to the stage classics: Shakespeare and Chekhov, Tennessee Williams with maybe a little August Wilson thrown in for urban grit.
But college is also where they should be exposed to experimental landscapes, plays that push the boundaries of linear storytelling and language, and encourage the audience to do some work.
Visiting University of Toledo professor Caitlyn Tella pushes both boundaries and buttons with her direction of veteran playwright Anne Washburn’s wonderfully absurdist comedy about globalization.
Or is it about how we communicate as a species — or fail to?
Either way, it may be the most thought-provoking play you see in Toledo this year.
Washburn’s work has been staged everywhere from Actors Theatre of Louisville to the Folger Library. Here she gives us theater of the vaguely specific. The action finds young American businessman Lowell (Carter M. Makiewicz) arriving at his firm’s foreign office to deal with an unspecified problem. For that matter, even the country remains vague. It could be Europe. It could be South America. It’s just not home.
The natives speak a stilted form of English, while Lowell is at a loss for the native tongue, here a mish-mash of sounds that seem perfectly legitimate, but form a gibberish created for this play. His colleagues try to keep him in the linguistic loop, but more often lapse into their private idioms while he stands baffled.
There’s also a budding romance between Lowell and office secretary Sara (Victoria I. Zajac), who says she wants truth but mostly acts like she needs a good hug. Their work-mates are a mot-ley crew, from stressed out mother Irene (Won-hee Kim), to the office bully, Nicol (Kurt T. Elfering). They view Lowell as both a teammate and annoyance. He’s an oddity. He’s American.
Employing elements of Kafka, Ionesco, and even telenovellas (there’s a pushy hooker and a financial theft of some sort), Washburn deconstructs the nature of communication, exploring the importance of tone and body language in the absence of coherent words. We still understand what’s going on (most of the time), but the delivery flirts with theater of the absurd.
That’s hardly a bad thing in this age when so much entertainment seems programmed on a loop. No easy answers here, even as the plot appears simplistic. Lowell is a stranger in a strange land. He’s a joiner who can’t find the entrance.
There are blemishes of course. Freshman actor Makiewicz plays Lowell as repressed naif when the role calls for shell-shocked fixer. And the play’s pacing can throw you off, from the near overture-length musical intro, to Pinter-esque pauses that border on the actors becoming a still life.
Mostly, though, Tella makes this eccentric journey worth the ride. She is aided by strong performances from her fairly young cast, notably Zajac’s feisty Sara (she has a Kaley Cuoco quality) and Elfering’s nakedly smarmy Nicol. Kristin Ellert’s set is a triumph of simple angles, while Stephen Sakowski’s sound and lighting design effectively accent this alternate reality.
If The Internationalist sounds a bit strange, rest assured it is. Yet by surrendering to its quirkiness — all actors save Makiewicz play two roles, one major and one minor — you stand a good chance of having some fun. At the very least you’ll find it memorable. And isn't that the hallmark of good theater?
“The Internationalist” will next be performed at 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday at the UT Center for Performing Arts Center Theatre. Tickets — $15 general admission, $10 for seniors and UT faculty, staff, military, and alumni, and $8 for students — are available at utoledo.Tix.com.
Contact Mike Pearson at:
mpearson@theblade.com
or 419-724-6159.
First Published April 7, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
