10 out of 12

I saw Anne Washburn's play 10 out of 12 in previews at Theater Wit last Friday (March 10), and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I think my experience was shaped partly by seeing Earthquakes in London at Steep Theatre the night before, and partly by a post-show discussion with director Jeremy Wechsler, who was trying to get feedback about specific things before heading into another rehearsal the next day. Reviews are tending to call the play “a love letter to the theatre,” which wasn’t really my takeaway. I saw it as a play about labor, one that defines theatre as a labor of love. But I also saw it as a story about how to handle impending disaster. The disaster in Earthquakes in London is climate change, with most characters refusing to take steps to avoid this disaster. The disaster in 10 out of 12 is on a much smaller level: opening a valiant production of a terrible play. Critics in New York and Chicago have been fairly gentle about their critiques of the play-within-a-play, but I think this production makes it clear that the play is pretentious and messy.  

In Theatre Wit’s production, the play being rehearsed has a delightfully pretentious title: The Dark Bough Shifts the Light, the Distant Shore Flies the Night. (Or something close to that.) The title appears on various documents on the call board at the entrance to the theatre, and on a binder on the tech table at the front of the house. (It was also on Wechsler’s own binder that he carried when he led the post-show discussion.) I’m not sure where this title came from, as I haven’t read the script, but it’s comically long and sounds vaguely like an Ezra Pound poem. The many ideas stuffed into the title are echoed in the scenes we see from the play, which is a genre mashup combining historical romance, gothic horror, repressed sexuality melodrama, bodice-ripper, and science fiction. Sort of Tom Stoppard meets Sarah Waters meets Ray Bradbury meets Henry James. (I started to wonder why the characters didn’t have British accents until they mentioned Washington Square.)

The protagonist of Dark Bough/Distant Shore seems to be Charles, who is obsessed with a relative (father? uncle?) named Richard, who had a predilection for being whipped that characters variously interpret as sexually gratifying or mystically transcendent. In a scene that leads to conflict among the cast, Carstairs and Lucille think that Charles is denying his sexual orientation, reading contemporary politics of sexuality onto the nineteenth century. Charles approaches an old woman about preserving a bough from the tree that was significant to Richard, only to learn that the tree has been destroyed. Marie reads letters from Richard that recount his experience of being whipped and whipping others on a ship. There’s also a future scenario in the play, where Richard and Marie (or a different character played by the same performer) are threatened by creepy demon-like creatures. It’s unclear whether Richard has somehow traveled forward in time, or if the play is suggesting parallel stories in the style of Stoppard’s Arcadia.     

The set for Dark Bough/Distant Shore (designed by Adam Veness) is fittingly pretentious. It consists of various symbolic objects in display cabinets that require precision lighting during particular scenes. The dark bough of the title is in the upper row toward stage left and is highlighted during stories about how the bough saved a character who was falling through a tree. A ship’s wheel next to the dark bough is lit when Richard’s time at sea is discussed. A chandelier stage right is lit to give a sense of festive or opulent locations. The chandelier receives some attention from technicians throughout the show. The overall effect reminded me of Todd Rosenthal’s set for Man from Nebraska at Steppenwolf (2003) or Kevin Depinet’s set for What the Butler Saw at Court Theatre (2007). The overall effect is of a smaller theatre company creating an aspirational set, either through ingenuity or overspending.

The script isn’t really ready for tech, and most of the actors know it. As Marie, Eva (Christine Vrem-Ydstie) reads three successive letters that chronicle Richard’s experiences at sea. Eva asks if one of the letters can be cut, and projection design indicates that it will be. Later, Paul (Stephen Walker), who portrays Carstairs, improvises a monologue intended to solve some narrative issues he has with the play.

Paul’s behavior throughout rehearsal is totally inappropriate, and it’s hard to avoid connecting this with recent discussions about abusive practices in the Chicago non-Equity theatre community. He’s an actor who has run his own company in the past, and has trouble allowing others to be in charge. But he couches these insecurities in bluster about the importance of the work, and doing justice to the characters the actors are playing.

Ben (Kyle Gibson) who plays Charles, suggests to Paul that failure is inevitable, but that actors must continue to struggle and do their best to bring life to characters. So while Dark Bough/Distant Shore references certain playwrights, 10 out of 12 is perhaps more interested in Beckett. Many theatre critics cite boredom as a central concern of 10 out of 12, and certainly boredom is also a central concern of Beckett and Chekhov.

The actors, designers, and technicians working on Dark Bough/Distant Shore will probably all be fine afterward, in spite of physical injuries and bruised egos. Not so much because they love the theatre, but because even if this play is terrible, it will pass and they will move on to do other shows. 

Update: This article in Performink says that the title is The Dark Bough Softly Shifts the Light, A Distant Shore Cries the Night and was chosen by Theatre Wit for the production. It also quotes Wechsler as saying we don't know enough about the play to judge it, and that the fictional theatre company is a bit out of its league technically, but if they can get the tech figured out it has the potential to be "an extraordinarily beautiful work."