Review: Sick at Hyde Park Theater

Zayd Dohrn could've skirted many of the pratfalls of the "issue play" on the backs of his characters (Creepy magician brother given to bloody seizures?! Dad obsessed with the Greeks in more ways than one?! Mother who is a wire hanger's length away from doing the Medea?! Hells yeah!) had he not set them racing in a "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner In A Strange Land? A Stranger!" storyline. At its core, the piece is a pedestrian family dramedy littered with "families sure are weird" and "fear is the enemy" soapbox commentaries that do nothing for the proceedings. The structure is heinously standard: Outsider enters with Insider, Insider leaves Outsider alone with Other Insider to talk about life inside, Third Insider enters and gives a conflicting view blah blah blah, shit hits the fan, and the piece ends with some characters resolved and some still searching. The dropped-shortly-after-they're-raised questions of homosexual adultery, incestuous intentions, and Munchausen's by proxy provide an alluring patina, but the play is otherwise so regular that the nebulous possibilities of darker forces at work hold little to none of the weight they might have. In fact, the only questions Sick effectively raises are in regards to storyline clarity and the ultimate validity of the Le Compte de Nuoy, which the piece recently won.

Given what they have to work with, the cast busts its ass with some resulting moments of real excellence and charm. Taylor Gill as prodigious progeny Sarah endows the role with a cautious vulnerability that is often lovely, and Joey LePage's disoriented Jim is affably disarming. It is curious, however, that the performances in this piece can vacillate from genuinely affecting to caricature so mercurially. The relationships periodically seem quasi-formed and in need of a more subtextual history. Often it seems that deeper, more smoldering choices would be more effective, but they are eschewed for laugh-grabbing choices like "hysterical", "awkward", "weird", and "torn". The production's attempts at quirk seem unpredictably disingenuous, and it seems to be on the whole confused as to whether it is a drama with comedic elements or a dark comedy with dramatic themes. With a chimeric script like this, a clearer sense of vision and a more complex root system would've benefited immensely.

Sick is atmospherically engaging. Upon entering a pristine white burrow bathed in homely light, the realization that this place isn't quite right sets in. Air filtration systems stand sentinel, and plastic bedecks the furniture and the entrances. The cast utilizes the space as if it is theirs and has been poisoned, whether it be through reticence to relax or cleansing the space (which occurs frequently). There's a transfixing sense of motion in this still place that can't be impervious to infiltration, despite attempt. In this red alert world, it's the subtle implications that are most satisfying, disturbing, and amusing. With that done well, it's really a shame that the script isn't able to keep up with the atmosphere the production creates.