Theater Review - Headshrinker
Insanity and reality mix it up in Seizure
Maybe one day we’ll be able to effect a cure for madness, some kind of magic-bullet form of Prozac that targets all forms of psychological disorder. Until treating mental illness becomes as simple as taking a pill, we’ll have to rely on remedies that may be less certain, but call for a deeper, richer understanding of unbalanced thinkers.
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In Robert Sanders’ play Seizure, a therapist named Anna (Tomi Lavinder) remarks that psychology is not an exact science, but more of an art form. I question whether most mental health professionals would be quite so candid and poetic, but those words convey the idea that psychiatric case histories, like insightful works of art, can convey a mind’s nuances and flaws. A Rorschach blot just might be worth a thousand words.
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Savage Tree Arts Center’s world premiere of Seizure captures how reality can appear distorted through the eyes of a deranged woman. Writer/director Sanders shows no lack of ambition, but attempts to encompass too much material in Seizure’s one-act, one-hour running time.
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Mental patient Kerry (Savage Tree co-founder Kristi Casey) delivers the pre-show speech to introduce her own production of a play: Peter Weiss’ 1963 script, Marat/Sade (also known by the title The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade). But is Kerry’s play being staged at a real asylum or within her own head?
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Kerry casts her play with mental patients and relatives, like her clearly humiliated mother (Judy Thomas). As cabaret-style accordion and drum music warbles in the background, Seizure unfolds like a fever dream. Sorting out “real” people from Weiss’ creations and bona fide hallucinations proves absolutely bewildering, especially if you don’t know Marat/Sade. It’s kind of like watching Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead if you’ve never heard of a play called Hamlet.
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We strongly pick up on Kerry’s attraction to Marat/Sade’s treatment of the French Revolution and grasp how an angry mental patient could obsess over violence, kinky sex and revolutionary politics. During the play-within-the-play, Kerry impatiently answers questions from Anna, who investigates Kerry’s background to uncover the motivations and trauma that led to the (as yet unrevealed) actions that got Kerry committed.
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The Marat/Sade gimmick takes a backseat for flashbacks to Kerry’s unhappy childhood and adult life, which provide jigsaw pieces of her addled persona. Kerry’s drunken, abusive father (Daniel Burnley) delivers a monologue about his own brutal father that provides one of the play’s most accessible sequences and indicates that violence runs in the family. When Kerry suffers the cruelty of a bitchy high schooler (Anna Kate Nalesnik) or struggles to accept the love of her young boyfriend (Donnie Weeks), we appreciate the pressures that can force a personality to crack.
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Casey’s performance presents mental illness as more than a collection of tics, manic episodes and depressed moods, even though her portrait of insanity never really surprises us. Lavinder, unfortunately, seems more like a sorority girl than a credible psychologist.
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With 11 actors, some of whom may be playing multiple roles (it’s difficult to tell for sure), Seizure seems to contain enough material for two acts. Character motivations and surprising twists would pack greater punch if further developed, and the Marat/Sade parallels would be easier to understand. Some roles I never figured out, like choreographer Erin Greenway as, apparently, a rhyming angel, or Randy Havens as a tough guy who may have been a hit man, or death himself.
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Seizure serves as the headliner of the Touch of Madness Festival, Savage Tree Arts Center’s fall 2005 project, which features additional shows — including dance and burlesque — that explore other aspects of insanity. Sanders’ play contains seeds of powerful drama and intriguing theatrical ideas, but in its compulsion to say too much too quickly, it crosses the fine line between creativity and lunacy.