Play leaves questions unanswered

Author: Ellen Grafton

Stepping onto McCullough stage last Wednesday, Claudia Stevens let out an eerie, crooning alien noise that reverberated through the audience. So began Stevens' one-woman show, "Dreadful Sorry Guys."

"Dreadful Sorry Guys" combined vocals, piano and monologues to explore genocide and societal guilt. Stevens began by relaying the true story of her friend, Gary Matson, who was murdered with his lover as part of a hate crime in California. She speculated what his death must have been like and whether or not Gary heard "voices in the room" of other spirits when he died. Stevens went on to embody a few of those voices. She performed monologues as three characters: "my man," the last of the Yahi Indians of Northern California and Only, the one Jewish survivor who returns to his home in Poland following World War II. Stevens distinguishes each character with costume, voice and physicality.

As "Dreadful Sorry Guys" progressed, a pattern emerged between the stories of Ishi, Only and Gary. Each character became revered, held up as a relic of a people wiped out by genocide. Ironically, they were honored by the same communities that were complicit in the acts of genocide. Ishi became a living specimen studied by anthropologists, a pop culture icon displayed for public amusement. Only was put in charge of the Jewish cemetery, supported financially for the rest of his life from the guilt of his town. Gary's memory was "honored" when the people in his area organized a day "celebrating cultural diversity," which Stevens ironically indicated has little to do with actual cultural diversity and more with interpretive dance performances and fancy titles. In the open discussion session after the show, Stevens explained she was interested in exploring the phenomenon in communities connected with genocide in which they display an "unwillingness to acknowledge deep-felt sorrow or shame but instead turn it into a celebration where they can sing and dance."

Stevens ended the piece with a short appearance by "Neander-doll," a recent archeological find that indicates there may have been some intermingling of Neanderthals and our ancestors. "Doll" represents yet another of a lost people. Stevens donmed a wig and sings the same strange visceral song that opened the show, hinting that mankind's tendency to mourn "the other" only when it are almost gone is as old to human nature as the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Stevens' mix of vocals, audience participation, piano pieces and monologues held the audience's attention, but sometimes this comes at the cost of the coherency of the show. The audience was given lines from an E.E. Cummings poem to whisper whenever Stevens mentions the "voices in the room" where Gary died, but the poems were never explored fully and felt more like an empty theatrical device. Although the explorative vocals were tied into the "Neander-doll" story at the end, they were so contrary to the rest of the show that they seemed confusing at times, rather than clarifying. The piano pieces, however, blended nicely with the content of the show by transforming familiar songs like "Clementine" into ironic commentaries on the false cheer of societies apologizing for past wrongs.

Although Stevens raised interesting points, they felt redundant by the end of the show. The idea that men fear and destroy people unlike themselves is no new concept to the audience so a return to this concept would have required fresh inspiration. Although the different narratives were well developed and attempts at reparations were explored, they lacked the ability to make the brutality of man seem novel or especially shocking. Stevens commented in the post-show discussion that "the piece doesn't set out to say one thing or another," but rather is an exploration of ideas. The problem is that Stevens didn't explore several viewpoints, but set up one that only varies in time and detail. They were victims ridiculing the societies responsible for the annihilation of their people, and as such were sympathetic and heroic but hardly novel or thought-provoking. It is an easy observation to say that the heart-breaking and dreadful phenomenon of genocide has no answers, but "Dreadful Sorry Guys" leaves one wishing there were at least more questions.