Marc Chun is not afraid to play with matches, having concocted a play composed of five people's nonlinear, one-sided dialogue. Sound like a way to scorch your theatrical fingers or get lost in avant-garde smoke?
Fortunately, in "Match" Chun lets his plot burn all the way down but deftly avoids getting singed. Presented by the Mill 6 Collaborative and directed by Antoine A. Gagnon, the production is intimately staged in the proudly fringe Devanaughn Theatre (located in an old piano factory). The theater's notoriously secluded entrance adds to the ambiance; by the time the audience takes its seats, they are primed for a uniquely personal experience.
For the most part, "Match" delivers. From a bare stage with five chairs set at skewed angles, the characters' five troubled tales gradually weave into one. The play opens with a chorus of voices in the dark speaking fragments of dialogue ("Thank you," "That's nice," "I didn't mean to," etc.). Out of context, you can't make much sense of them, but you are challenged from the outset to start finding matches.
When lights come up, an almost unnervingly tall and thin young man (Mikkel Raahede) who informs the audience, "The sky was that blue ... I will just call it that blue because I guess you really only name the things you're afraid you might forget." This turns out to be a theme throughout the play, as none of the characters themselves even have names. We must identify them by who they are.
The observer of "that blue" is actually a very ill painter. The rather upset woman far stage right is his girlfriend, a struggling academic (Brashani Reece). The woman (Judith Austen) who enters profusely thanking the audience for its non-existent applause is a movie star and singer. The stressed, sarcastic man in the suit to her right is her manager (Matt Chapuran). Finally, the comically awkward man in the corner (Jim Jordan) is the odd man out. He is being questioned by someone, has an infirm mother and seems obsessed with Fibonacci numbers and lottery tickets, but his connection to the others is not readily apparent.
From this cast of characters, speaking only to an unseen and unheard companion, a plot unfolds involving true (but difficult) love, Hollywood triteness, morality, attempts to rationalize dishonesty, life, death, bone marrow transplants and extraordinary coincidences. To keep the audience constantly engaged, Gagnon has given his actors a clear directive: keep moving. (Conversely, whenever the actors don't pick up their cues, it is jarringly obvious).
The quick pace is crucial as many characters interrupt others by duplicating or contradicting the previous line in a completely different context. Everyone's lines are padded with references to other characters, saying things like "It came out of the blue." The fragmented lines from the initial blackout reappear throughout the play. The effect is a constant layering of connection between the isolated characters.
In the world of "Match," costumes are unassuming and the set is almost non-existent, so the burden falls on the actors to conjure images in the audience's mind. While they rarely move across the stage, they keep in motion through their voices, faces and postures. Their level of success is uneven throughout the play; it seems to take them a little time to settle into their roles. It also takes time for the audience to get used to the unusual format.
Raahede, however, who opens and closes the performance, has a strong enough presence to carry the show along until the spoken world takes over. In the ensemble cast, he alone seems to be able to choose his words without slowing the pace. Chapuran and Jordan also deliver appropriately comedic and deeply conflicted portrayals. Austen's movie star is just the right mix of caricature and sincerity to be believable. Reece's character is adequate, but definitely the least complex and interesting of the group.
As the play progresses, one's efforts to match fragments of story and dialogue are rewarded. It is exhilarating to realize who each character is speaking to and how, in the end, all of the characters are connected to each other.
The hour-long one-act is a flash, like a match-light in the dark. The audience is given a glimpse that sears itself into their memory, before the match burns down and Chun drops it. It's hard to say, exactly, what you saw, but you know you don't want to forget it.
