The Thin Place by Lucas Hnath / A House of Ithaqua production/ Cherry Artspace, through October 26 houseofithaqua.com.
The measure of a good ghost story, is that it haunts you. It hovers in your mind, at a spot just between your shoulders that makes you hitch your breath and suddenly turn around where you spot—nothing. Or is it?
By this measure, House of Ithaqua’s latest show, The Thin Place, succeeds. A strong minimalist production directed by HOI’s artistic director AJ Sage and co-designed by Jeff Hodges, it features the tight ensemble acting that is becoming typical of HOI.
The striking set is simply a series of white sheer panels that reach floor to the Cherry’s high ceilings, gaps between, inscribing three sides of a square, the audience being the third. The only lighting are hanging bulbs—one inside this square the others illuminating, coloring and shadowing the panels.
The audience seating is limited, which increases both the sense of intimacy and induces a slight sense of vertigo, as we collectively lean forward to listen in.
Playwright Lucas Hnath (A Doll’s House, Part 2; Dana H; Red Speedo) hovers on the edge of experimental while anchoring himself in the semi-realistic. He has a strong interest in the powers of belief structures.
Hilda (Carolyn Chave), our narrator-protagonist, misses her Gran. When she was a wee one, they would play a guessing game in which Gran writes a word that Hilda cannot see. Gran says she wants to be in communication after her death. Mother sees this spirtualist game as demonic, and bars Gran from living with them anymore. Mom has her own problems, we eventually learn.
As the action of the play commences, Hilda is missing both, and hungry for a connection through “the thin place” that separates the world of the living from the worlds of those not.
Enter a medium, Linda (Elizabeth Seldin), a Brit transplanted to the U.S. (possibly running from something). She connects Hilda to Gran, or does she? Linda has the air of a con; yet Hilda refuses to give up her belief that Linda, perhaps subconsciously, is in touch with the spirit world. And where is Mom?
Late into the mix tumble Sylvia (Sylvie Yntema), rich and liberal, a patron of Linda’s medium practice and possible ex-lover, and cousin Jerry (Daniel Baruch), a bro neocon.
Hnath leaves the relationships a bit unfixed, indeterminate; which works like gangbusters, until it doesn’t. Linda as guru/Fagin and Hilda as her acolyte and private audience is the rich axis of the work. Sylvia and Jerry are quick sketches of two political poles. Hnath is broadening his story of manipulation and belief to larger structures (the play premiered during Trump’s reign), but he quickly abandons this thread.
Chave and Seldin bring a knotty intensity to their pairing. Chave can be all bright-eyed and eager, then pull in emotionally, signs of a scarred child. Seldin has fun playing the quick-change tactics of a ‘player’ who also seems addicted to her own game.
Yntema and Baruch are also well paired; she voluble, seeking approval, shifting alliances; he the slyly sexist dominator.
Sage’s minimalism proves strength and weakness. The dimness of the lighting makes faces hard to read, and he allows a quietness in the actors which adds strain in getting the language across. An over reliance on mood over simple telling creeps in.
But it still haunts.
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