This Lingering Life. HERE (see Off-Off Broadway). By Chiori Miyagawa. Directed by Cat Miller. With ensemble cast. Running time: 1hr 25mins. No intermission.
This Lingering Life: In brief
Chiori Miyagawa examines questions of karma in a tale that gives a Noh twist to life in present-day America. Cat Miller directs a cast of ten for Cake Productions.
This Lingering Life: Theater review by Helen Shaw
Something has gone wrong in Chiori Miyagawa's This Lingering Life—some crucial anarchy has turned into order, while what was meant to be ordered has become a mess. How did it happen? Perhaps the fact that an earlier version was 40 minutes longer offers a clue: This version feels hectic and cursory all at once. Cat Miller's production at HERE does, though, show us gleaming bits of salvage, a few sparkling comic performances. They aren't enough to anchor the play, but they're sweet to remember.
Miyagawa takes nine Noh plays—full of hungry ghosts, grieving mothers, star-crossed lovers and wandering warriors—and chops the stories into salad. Meg MacCary is a madwoman whose hair grows up instead of down (she just looks sick about it), who wanders the quasi-modern earth, trying to help assorted spirits find release. She's forever confused about her role (“Oh! I'm the narrator!”) and whether or not she's made it to Bardo (Buddhism's karmic purgatory) where lifetimes unfold into the next. But Miyagawa takes us through the stories so quickly, we hardly register them, much less the “letting go” the characters must apparently attain.
The speed pushes many of the performances broad, as characters fight for oxygen. The best of section of text—a prologue that “spoils” all the plots—is a rare moment that toys fruitfully with the work's inspirations. Elsewhere are good ideas, certainly, many of them juxtaposing modern characters with the trembling Noh climaxes. William Franke and Luke Forbes do nice work as backpackers surprised by an insane woman; Forbes returns as a spoiled princess for a vicious mean-girl moment. But in each case, the playwright abandons the scene almost as soon as she's begun it; you'd think in a piece so concerned with karma, she would be more concerned to get each incarnation right.—Theater review by Helen Shaw