At the heart of Aaron Posner’s satiric view and review of modern theater beats Anton Chekhov’s prescription for his play The Seagull: It presents “a great deal of conversation about literature, little action, tons of love.” In it, the seagull is a being in the play’s real life setting but also a symbol of a character with whom it’s entwined. Urbanite uses a gull’s picture as a scenic-sans-symbolic backdrop. Its titular import is that it’s Posner’s successful attempt at shocking and commercial success. This, he shows, and not linguistically painting psychological portraits, mirrors the aims of most contemporary theater. In Posner’s play, building on the kind of humor of such comedians as Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, the relentless repetition of the f-word may at times affect tone yet not incidents or motives. One might credit it with an alienation effect but not the Brechtian type. Its textual value is to the play as interactive and meta-theater. The play’s mode is presentational (admitting it’s a play, not reality), not representational (enacting reality within four walls of a stage, with the audience allowed to observe it from a removed fourth wall). In fact, at Urbanite the audience sits on two sides of a longitudinal playing area, at times next to a waiting actor or two. Before the plot can be unveiled, someone in the audience must yell “Start the fucking play!” It is a sure thing that, considering prices and bother of theater-going today, there’ll come the desired command. Next, as in meta-theater, actors take over and present the play, albeit with cooperation from the audience willing to participate in interactive theater. Improvisational theater is sometimes called for, though the play is mainly scripted. It’s the result of devised theater, in which a script proceeds from an idea that is allowed to develop, usually with contributions from readings and performing. Posner’s idea came from Chekhov, and he developed it to explore modern theatrical forms. That has resulted in a satirical, nonrealistic performance piece about realistic characters and their situation. Within a meta-theatrical frame, in which the leading character Con begins the activity, all the characters are caught up in love. Con, a young playwright (wonderfully sustained in self-centeredness by Joseph McGranaghan), is tortured by love for young Nina (sincere Cindy de la Cruz, recalling the original Nina clearly symbolized by the eventually killed seagull). Nina, an aspiring actress, falls in love with Trig, a famous poet (Barry Lipstein, channeling well the “method” of Stanislavsky, who first played Chekhov’s literary Trigorin). Trig, a user of people or anything to help him keep at the top of his game, is the latest lover of Con’s mother Emma. Though losing her fame as an actress, she still attracts men with her remaining, if fading, beauty. Tess Hogan fits the role to a ‘T’. She inspires pity, despite acting and attractiveness being more important to Emma than son Con. She uses her property to maintain position but also, to her credit, keeps her brother Sorn there. Dan Higgs effectively shows Sorn’s a traditionalist, unprepared for old age but trying to deal with it and in new times. Loving life, Sorn would like to hold on to it. With songs that reflect Mash’s bitterness at unrequited love for Con, she’s well realized by Summer Dawn Wallace. (Urbanite’s sound system could be stronger so as to pick up all her lyrics, sad or satirically sweet.) While Mash can’t get up the courage to let Con know how deep her love is, his best friend Dev wants good for him yet hopes it won’t include Mash. Dev loves her very much. As Dev, Zak Wilson accomplishes smoothly a difficult job of being uncomplicated. He openly loves and appreciates beauty everywhere without actually being a simpleton. How does Posner, like Chekhov, get away with using realistic characters in realistic situations in a play that denounces realism and calls for new forms of theater? I think it’s critical that the characters are mostly actors. Director Vincent Carlson-Brown capitalizes on their training to have them present many modes of acting. One never gets the feeling that they’ve been coached but rather that he’s guided them. Happily, that comes over in their treatment of the audience. Con even gets away with Posner’s lines that wish for freedom from “old Jews, gays, academics, people who did plays in high school” especially “stupid adaptations of Shakespeare.” In Sarasota, that pretty much covers all but some cabaret attendees. Yet oldsters probably remember “Happenings” and may be experienced in or disposed to participating in them or something similar in Posner’s play. Con calls for “new forms of theater,” but he uses practices that hark back notably to Calderon’s Life is a Dream and to Pirandello’s plays, especially Six Characters in Search of an Author and Tonight We Improvise as well as Brechtian epic theater of episodes with musical breaks and other alienation effects. Con’s words about and to the spectators he wants freedom from can’t be called audacious since they’re tame compared to Peter Handke’s Insulting the Audience. There are examples, too, of Theater of the Absurd, such as that the apparent reason for Con killing the seagull was to make “art” and that, in terms of style, words said subjectively (especially the f-words) may be meaningful to the utterer but have no objective meaning. Further, words not attached to thought or to agreed upon meaning have no value as communication. Are Nina’s sane or not? Two things at Urbanite tickled me. First, the costumes (especially the colors and textures of the women’s) advance characterization so well. Second, Posner satirizes the pitiful conclusions of so many contemporary plays which add narrations about what happened to their characters after the action of the plays has stopped. Sometimes it’s because a playwright doesn’t know how to show rather than tell. Other times a play’s poor structure won’t allow tying up all loose ends of the plot or fates of other than central characters. Posner satirizes relevant less than sterling playwrights by having Dev reveal final ends for all the lovers. I won’t be the spoiler with details but will add Dev’s one happy narrator of what his future held. As for playwright Con, well, obviously he has at least one play to his credit even if it its theatrical form’s not all new.
