Vaishnavi Sharma and Niki Fridh in two of their 30 roles in Theatre Lab’s The City in the City in the City (Photos by Morgan Sophia Photography)
By Jan Sjostrom
Theater Lab might consider issuing seat belts along with tickets to performances of its season-opening production, The City in the City in the City.
The world premiere of Matthew Capodicasa’s kaleidoscopic, fantastical play is a roller coaster ride, skillfully steered by director Matt Stabile, full of twists, turns, blind corners and about-faces. To keep up you’ll have to glue your eyes to the stage for a gripping 100 minutes with no intermission.
The show is powered by the tour de force performances of just two actresses, Niki Fridh and Vaishnavi Sharma, who transform themselves – sometimes at warp speed – into more than 30 characters. That’s quite a feat, considering they wear the same contemporary street clothes throughout and use hardly any props.
On the surface, the show seems to be a present-day story about a woman’s quest to find the father she’s never known dressed in the exoticism of a tale from the Arabian Nights.
The Arabian Nights part proclaims itself immediately in Michael McClain’s immersive wrap-around set, which looks a bit like a sultan’s harem. The walls are covered with fabric patterned with Islamic art-style designs. Glittering lanterns and stars hang from the ceiling and a tiled floor leads to a spiraling circle design.
Vaishnavi Sharma
As the show opens, Tess, played by Sharma, advertises for a traveling companion with the same name as Tess’s mother, Laura. Tess needs a stand-in for her mother, who died just as they were about to travel to the ancient city-state of Mastavia to retrieve a parcel left for them by Tess’s father, a man’s she’s never met.
The Laura who Tess chooses is divorced and heartbroken about her separation from her young son, who lives with his father. Like the unemployed Tess, Laura, played by Fridh, is adrift in a city she’s lived in all her life. More facts emerge about Laura, and the passel of burner phones she packs, as the story develops.
Mastavia isn’t a comfortable place either. The most conquered city in history, it’s a magnet for refugees and has a reputation for swallowing up outsiders. A second city of merchants has sprung up around the original walled city. Tess and Laura don’t discover the third city in the title until well into the story.
The tale unfolds in a torrent of words as bits of narration, stage directions, conversations and thoughts – sometimes spoken in unison and other times fired off in fragments.
Humor pops up unexpectedly, as it does in dark children’s stories. In Mastavia, Sharma morphs into a taxi driver by pulling her long hair over her upper lip. When Tess asks a garrulous waiter how long he’s worked for the jazz club where she’s drinking, he regales her with the many ways he could die before reaching his next work anniversary.
Niki Fridh
In addition to the waiter, Fridh’s roles include a punctilious lawyer and a mysterious blue-eyed old woman who Tess swears is shadowing her. Sharma’s many characters include an elderly jazz singer who loftily claims top honors for pain, and Laura’s traumatized 6-year-old son.
Theatre Lab has gifted the play with an outstanding production, with contributions from designers Penny Koleos Williams’ costumes, Thomas Shorrock’s lighting and Matt Corey’s and Tyler Johnson Grimes’ sound design.
What’s the play all about? Interpretations could take many directions. There are references to war, refugees and the misery of people the more fortunate prefer to ignore. Echoes of alienation thread through the story.
In the end, it’s probably up to audiences to devise their own explanations. The show gives them plenty of material to work with.
The City in the City In the City runs through Nov. 23 at Theatre Lab, on Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus at 777 Glades Road. Performances are held at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets range from $35 to $45. Call (561) 297-6124 or visit fauevents.com.
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