Three generations of suicidal depression play out simultaneously in Alice Birch’s Anatomy of a Suicide at Atlantic Theater Company after a run at London’s Royal Court. The storyline’s fractured narrative twists and turns, sometimes even shatters, occasionally resulting in confusion but mainly inducing the unsettling, disturbing effects of the sources of psychological damage. This is not a comfortable piece of theater, but it is affecting and memorable.
Anatomy of a Suicide’s title gives it away. Someone is going to take their own life, but who, how, when, and why are the main questions Birch addresses in a series of short, jagged, and moving vignettes. Three different women appear to be headed in the same self-destructive end.
Director Lileana Blain-Cruz divides Mariana Sanchez’s blue-tone, aquatic-themed, open set into three areas where the storylines transpire. Jiyoun Chang’s lighting and Kaye Voyce’s period-specific costumes help to differentiate the locales.
On stage right, there is Carol (Carla Gugino in a shattering performance), who opens the play is a staggered, disoriented state, attempting to explain to her loving husband John (sweet, supportive Richard Topol) why she slit her wrists and then flooded the house while lying in an overflowing bathtub. Center stage, a similar dialogue occurs between drug-addled Anna (devastating Celeste Arias) and her doctor boyfriend (Vince Nappo in one of many effective roles). On stage left, a slightly different scene emerges with the apparently stable fisherwoman Jo (quirky, fun Jo Mei) getting her hand stitched by brusque, officious Bonnie (Gabby Beans, wondrously suppressing swirling emotions). Over the course of an intermissionless 100 minutes, we learn Carol, Anna, and Bonnie are mother, daughter and granddaughter, united by genetics and an incompatibility with life.
It’s not always clear who is who. It’s hard to follow the plot when a good chunk of the dialogue is spoken simultaneously. Some scenes are bafflingly obscure and others unconnected—for example, Bonnie’s attendance at a colleague’s birthday party adds nothing to the story. But thanks to a strong cast and Blain-Cruz’s firm direction, intentions and emotions are clear enough to convey the individual meanings of these fragments and painfully tell a harsh, unhappy tale of generation-spanning depression.
