Middle class paranoia sits squarely at the center of Lisa D’Amour’s 2012 play Detroit, directed by Assistant Professor of Theater Virginia Anderson over the recent Fall Weekend. The show, set in the suburbs of an American city in the present day, explores the changing landscape of American life through two couples.
Couple A: A somewhat-neurotic alcoholic named Mary (Terilyn Eisenhauer ’15) and her recently laid-off husband, Ben (Brion Morrissey-Bickerton ’17), who is in the process of starting his own business. And Couple B: Their new neighbors, Sharon (Mattie Barber-Bockelman ’16) and Kenny (Aidan Gorrell ’18), recovering drug addicts with a few secrets of their own.
What ensues is a darkly comedic, verbose collection of screwy snapshots—back porch picnics gone straight to “Hell in a hand basket,” to paraphrase from the show itself. But what makes Detroit truly interesting to watch are its quiet moments. Restrained looks, body gestures, the silences, both awkward and comfortable, that often define our own conversations. In these subtle moments, especially, the cast of Detroit grasps the reality of the situations, causing more stunning juxtaposition with the play’s flamboyant theatricalities.
Mattie Barber-Bockelman in particular, captures these excesses, as well as the more tender distinctions, with fluid exactness. Sharon is, at once, completely in and out of control. Barber-Bockelman understands and physicalizes these polar opposites in the precision of her performance, while simultaneously adjusting to newly discovered moments within her character.
Airing more on the side of reservation are the performances of Aidan Gorrell and Brion Morrissey-Bickerton, who bring a quiet intensity to the characters of Kenny and Ben, respectively. Gorrell’s Kenny is highly controlled, but in the laconic moments of intensity, Gorrell hints at a deeper, perhaps darker characterization for the character of Kenny. Morrissey-Bickerton shows a similar nuance in the buttoned up character of Ben. With Ben, it is the things left unsaid that bring out the twisted comicality of his character.
Rounding out the ensemble is Terilyn Eisenhauer, who portrays Mary in Detroit. Mary is a character of extremes, from meek-back-porch-housewifery to severe bursts of unbridled neurosis, all of which Eisenhauer manifests in her performance. Eisenhauer exhibits the very paranoia that seems to color the world of the play. Like Sharon, Eisenhauer’s Mary displays a rabid intensity.
In the closing moments of Detroit, the audience is introduced to Frank, an old man, who owns the house Sharon and Kenny have occupied. Diving into the role of Frank is W. Lee Hisle, Vice President for Information Services at Connecticut College. Hisle communicates a naturalism in his performance that could only have come from truly living it, rather than performing it.
Hisle’s inclusion in the show is significant as it focuses the idea of generations, a concept explored quite overtly throughout Detroit. Unfortunately, the literal incorporation of these generational differences on stage actually detracts from the production, as it seemed more to highlight how much younger the cast of college students was than their characters’ intended ages.
Aesthetically, the design of Detroit is striking. Edward T. Morris’s scenic design, white two-dimensional houses and AstroTurf lawns, embody a falseness and sameness utilized to imbue the reality of such a neighborhood into the audience’s heads. Morris’s stark designs served as a wonderful canvas for the splendid lighting design of Masha Tsimring, who captures a understated reality of light. The sound and costume design of Joel Abbott and Emily Taradash, respectively, further highlight the sober sense of realism in the show’s design.
While realism was appreciated and heightened the world of Detroit, the painfully long scene transitions, which allowed for aesthetic changes to the world, halted the action of the play entirely. Detroit is a play that builds and builds to a fiery climax, and I would have happily forgone the intense realism of some of the production’s design aspects for a less jolted growth of tension in the production.
Director Ginny Anderson uses the intimacy of Tansil Theater to craft a real feeling of closeness between the audience and performers. The physical proximity forces the audience to confront their own propinquity to the events and characters of the play.
It’s fitting then that Detroit played over Fall Weekend, as the subject matter of the play seemed more targeted towards the adults and parents rather than the students of the College. Adults and parents made up most of the audience demographic at the performance I attended. While students at the College may find associations withinDetroit and how it might factor into their own future, there’s a certain amount of distance felt from the immediacy of some of its content.
The issues I took with Detroit dealt more with the content itself than the production at Connecticut College. The gender politics of the play are both simplified and in extremes: painting its men as libido-driven and unfeeling and its women as psychotic and addicted. These may be the personalities of the characters D’Amour has crafted, but in a work dealing with larger ideals of contemporary middle class American culture, I believe deeper characterization of genders would have been beneficial, especially given the devotion Detroit gives to contrasting male versus female characters.
D’Amour’s goals and themes and even some of her humor are a little too obvious, and I applaud the production here at Connecticut College for discovering and embracing some of Detroit’s subtler touches. It was the quiet, twisted reality of Anderson’s production that made Detroit an engaging watch. •
