After a long absence due to COVID, Broadway is slowly starting to come back. But the majority of new productions are not the typical Main Stem fare of jukebox musicals, revivals, or tuners based on popular movies. Most recent openings have been transfers or returns of unconventional Off-Broadway offerings. Two of them, Is this a Room and Dana H., playing in repertory after award-winning runs at the Vineyard Theater, are derived from transcripts of recordings of real people living frightening events. This pair of unusual evenings are both short (only 70 minutes each) and small-scale with simple sets, but pack an enormous wallop.
Is this a Room is Tina Satter’s nightmarishly tense recreation of the FBI interrogation of Reality Winner (yes, that is her real name), an Air Force intelligence specialist. She was accused of leaking classified information which provided evidence that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. The script is taken from the agents’ recordings on the day they showed up at Reality’s Augusta, Georgia home and slowly transformed it into a space of intimidation. Though the specifics of the leaked documents are not mentioned, nor does the name Trump ever come up, Satter, listed as conceiver and director, creates a chilling contemporary political drama with suggestion and nuance. Small talk over gym memberships, pets, and careers is interspersed with needling, leading questions as Reality’s veneer of normality slowly crumbles. The play becomes not about specifics but about the power of authority to crush the individual.
Satter and her expert cast of four subtly balance the shifts from mundane chatter to ominous power plays. Emily Davis captures Reality’s jittery facade, inner resolve, and desperation to put her life back in order. Whether she is pleading for her pets to be housed if she is arrested or struggling to stand up for her rights and beliefs, Davis holds our attention and sympathy.
As the lead FBI agent, Pete Simpson is a master at understatement, slipping pleasantries in between threats while Will Cobbs as his partner is a scary “bad cop.” Becca Blackwell provides sturdy support as their backup. Sound designers Lee Kinney and Sanae Yamada create a nightmarish aural landscape, complete with threatening “Booms” every time material from the transcript is redacted.
The transfer to Broadway lacks the intimacy of the Vineyard run—I remember feeling as if I were being interrogated along with Reality when I saw it. But Room remains a searing snapshot of a surveillance state.
