For the record,
I am personally opposed to serial killers. Granted, I haven't met very many (or
any, so far as I know). Still, I consider myself staunchly in the
anti-serial-killer column.
Yet when you put
a mass murderer onstage, whether it's Richard III or Sweeney Todd, I'm fascinated.
The skill with which the killer goes from one victim to the next, dispatching
anyone in his path, creates an intrigue. I can't look away.
Therein lies the
beauty of Sam Kahn's play Ultraviolence.
As we watch one sympathetic character after another dispatched by a
self-proclaimed narcissist, we find ourselves rooting not for the good,
wholesome, ordinary people, but for the killer narcissist.
That narcissist
is James, played by Michael Tyler, who also appeared in Kahn's previous play
Chatter which premiered last year at
The Tank. Tyler had a minor role in Chatter,
but in Ultraviolence he's the focus
of attention, even when (perhaps especially when) he has his back to the
audience.
James makes his
presence known, even before he appears to the other characters, by.... Well... by having loud
sex with an upstairs neighbor, Karen (played by Whitney Harris). Eventually, Karen
introduces the new man in her life to the folks who are downstairs: the
cerebral Laura (Annie Hägg), her brother Ed (Michael Coppola) and her depressed
roommate Page (Deya Danielle).
Page is
fascinating to James--as she seems to be to everyone else in the play, too.
"It's not just that she's beautiful," Laura tells us, since "in
New York, there are a lot of very beautiful girls." Rather, Page has some extra
quality that makes her immediately desired. Laura puts it down to "sad
eyes," but it seems to be more than that. She is the flower that has not
yet bloomed. Trapped in a cycle of depression, she seems like someone who could
be amazing, if she could only find the key to unlock her potential.
That key
is--yup--ultraviolence. As she begins a relationship with James, she starts to
glow, and simultaneously her friends start to disappear, having a tendency to
break their necks whenever James is around. Fortunately, nothing the audience watches
is actually violent. Director Roxana Kadyrova (also a talented actor who played
the lead in Chatter last year) stages the play
so that red clothing and dance-like movements replace actual acts of
violence onstage.
Derek Stratton shows up late in the show as the wholesome Andrew, who might be Page's last chance
of escaping James's murderous vortex that sucks her into his dark world.
Stratton is also credited as choreographer, and some of the dance sections are both
beautiful to watch and surprisingly acrobatic.
Like Chatter, Ultraviolence makes use of projections, which fit in well with the
scenic design by Kellyann Hee. The play is being performed at Eris Evolution in
Brooklyn, which boasts an intimate performance space and some of the hardest
working bartenders in New York.
Photograph by Steven Jähnert
