“This God Damned House” by Matthew MacLachlan. Directed by Ella Jane New. Set Design: David Henderson; Lighting Design: Michael Abrams; Sound Design: Greg Russ; Costume Design: Rica de Ocampo Presented by Chain Theatre, 312 W. 36th Street, 3rd floor, New York, New York through April 8.
by Nicole Jesson
This God Damn House is a play about missed opportunities. It begins with a successful playwright making an emergency unscheduled return to his family and childhood home in Florida because of a family crisis. His mother, a hoarder, is losing her home within the next 24 hours, and he and his brother need to pack up the mess, both literally and figuratively. Without giving away too much, the characters spend the night missing opportunities to right the wrongs in their relationships. Unfortunately, the production spends 100 minutes missing its own opportunities in this world premiere of Matthew McLachlan’s dramatically tense play.
The brothers – Kirk Gostkowski as Jacob the older, local brother and Gabriel Rysdahl as Danny, the younger playwright, have such rich material to work with, both in their character arcs and the setting itself. And their entrance, “Jesus Christ, Jacob. Why didn’t you tell me it got this bad?” sets the scene. The house is that of a lower-middle-class hoarder in Florida. It’s August, when Florida averages 91 degrees and 6 inches of rain. There’s urgency in the brothers’ visit, as everything the family has been avoiding trying to fix for 10 years needs to get resolved, and quickly.
But with the abundance of sensory riches, we are left feeling that the cast only experiences them when there is a line directly mentioning the smell, the filth, or the urgency with which they must react. We never got the sense of Florida in August, and we wouldn’t have known it was the setting unless you had read the script. The brothers seem to have no emotional attachment to this “God Damn House” despite it being their childhood home. Until much later in the play, we would have thought this was just their mother’s home after her divorce. In addition, by the end of the play, no one was exhausted by the heat, the filth, or the fact they’d been moving furniture around the clock.
It isn’t until Act Two, with the arrival of Christina Perry’s Allie, that the play jolts to life, and it’s the first time that the audience feels someone is truly connecting to their reality. She has a visceral reaction to the setting, to the people, and to her life in the moment, which earns her a spontaneous round of applause from the audience. Perry also draws in the mother, Angie, played by Sachi Parker, as the women in this family battle for their respective places. Rica de Ocampo (also the costume designer) plays Hannah, an innocent drawn into this family’s drama, and she’s the character we can most relate to, as she gets to see everyone for who they are without decades of baggage cluttering the view.
One side note, from a physical standpoint, I feel Ms. Parker is miscast . She is nothing like what’s described by the playwright as a lumbering, bad drugstore dye job with insinuations throughout the script that she’s a woman of some girth. Ms. Parker’s silken gray/white hair neatly fastened to the top of her head perched on her slight frame, gives off more of a damsel in distress quality. When she complains about hips and ankles you might imagine her issues stem from years of distance running, as opposed to “overeating to comfort herself”.
Directed by Ella Jane New, who has an impressive resume, this production of This God Damn House isn’t quite pulled together. I was left unsure of what her vision is. Matthew McLachlan’s script hasn’t been fully mined for the treasures it holds. The script allows you to get down and dirty, but unfortunately, the production feels sanitized.
That said, This God Damned House needs an audience. It needs to grow and evolve and learn from itself. Shows change and evolve and often don’t resemble their former selves. Transforming from mind to page to stage is no small feat, and there is something wonderful stewing in the cesspool that is this house. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.chaintheatre.org/this-gd-damn-house
