Alan Berks' adaptation of "Six Characters in Search of an Author" opens in the backstage control area of a reality TV show. Three contestants have made it to the final night of "The Maze," competing to see who will be the last standing.
Into this profane and mundane setting walk the six characters as envisioned in Luigi Pirandello's original 1921 play. First visible as ghostly images on the video monitors set throughout the "house" used for the TV show, this haunted family turns the faux reality into a hyper-reality of metatheater.
Pirandello proposed that these family members are characters from a tragedy left unfinished by its author.
The ambitious producer of "The Maze" sees an opportunity to appropriate this theatrical narrative for his own "actors."
On philosophical terms, these questions of reality, stereotypes, privilege and ownership of story can make intriguing conversation — the kind that would fuel long nights on a couch with cocktails. After all, Pirandello's characters (most forcefully in Adam Whisner's father figure) argue that their story possesses greater truth than any human reality. And reality TV pursues anything but reality. Pass the bong.
In Berks' staging, though, which opened Friday at Park Square Theatre's Boss Stage, the concepts oddly compete rather than complement. As Whisner's father and Kiara Jackson's "Stepdaughter" play out a scene from their story, the TV producer (Paul LaNave) shouts that he's got enough grist.
"It gets better, why did you stop us?" says the stepdaughter. Exactly what I was thinking. This thing was just getting good and then this annoying producer breaks it up. His intellectual yammerings prevent the narrative from hooking us.
As smart and insightful as Berks' adaptation is, this story only on rare occasion gains the traction to rise above the necessary confusion and deliver a truth of its own. The stage avatars can't overcome our intellectual and emotional frustration.
Berks has constructed lots of aura in this production. Jackson, Whisner and Sandra Struthers as the fated mother commit deeply to their reality. But the central, animating juxtaposition of reality TV coming up against intentional drama does not pay off. The idea does not cohere on stage.
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