“Loss is loss,” Thom says to the five other members of the weekly grief support group. “Twenty years ago, our dog died. It took me fifteen years to even entertain the thought of getting another dog.”
“It took you fifteen years to get a new dog, but three months to start dating!?” says Lily, whose 50-year-old mother died unexpectedly about four months ago — at about the same time as Thom’s wife. “I wish I could go on dates to find a new mom,” Lily adds.
Emotions are raw among the characters mourning in “Someone Spectacular,” a play written by Doménica Feraud while she herself was mourning the unexpected death of her own mother at 51. But the bickering, resentful, guilt-ridden — grieving — characters also offer each other support – which some audience members might find as well from this low-key play as it unfolds as if in real time.
The six characters each grieve for the loss of “someone spectacular” who was in their lives, Besides Thom (Damian Young) and Lily (Ana Cruz Kayne), Evelyn (Gamze Ceylan) is in the group to work out the complicated feelings she has about the death of her mother, a mentally ill woman who abused her as a child. Julian (Shakur Tolliver) whose aunt died, feels there is nowhere else he can express how much the woman meant to him. “No one at work said anything. I guess they thought that because it was just my aunt it wasn’t a big deal? … She was the one person who had my back.” Jude (Delia Cunningham), a newcomer to the group and something of an outlier, is a young married woman who had a miscarriage eighteen months ago. This doesn’t sit well with Nelle (Alison Cimmet), whose sister died, and who sees a “difference between losing a fetus and losing a person.”
The playwright makes an effort to turn this group session into something out of the ordinary. Much is made of the absence of the grief counselor, Beth, who usually leads it. She simply doesn’t show up, which worries and angers the grievers. There is also a secret revealed about one of the characters. The production even presents some very modest suggestions of the supernatural, mostly through lighting and sound effects. Such efforts to make the therapy session more theatrical are unnecessary, but they are not intrusive enough to undermine the play’s strength. What’s best about “Someone Spectacular” is the specific ways the characters express their grief, and act it out, and observe it in each other. Some of this winds up being surprisingly funny (see the exchange about the dog), due in part to the actors’ delivery, but the audience laughter is often that of recognition.
The expressions of grief of course differ from character to character (some have lost their appetite; others eat too much), but they all share more than they’re willing to admit: The characters each tend to feel their loss is greater than anybody else’s. They frequently express a sense of guilt.
Evelyn stops herself from complaining once again about her insane mother. “God, I sound like a broken record.”
“We’re all broken records. That’s the point of these sessions,” Thom replies. “You have to keep telling us about your mom until your body understands that she’s dead.”
Jude says she can’t help feeling responsible for her child’s death.
“Maybe if you blame yourself, that makes things easier,” Julian observes.
“How does that make things easier?”
“Because it means what happened was in your control. It’s harder to accept that life is random. Our people were taken. There’s no logic to their deaths, which means there won’t be any logic to ours.”
Someone Spectacular
Signature Theater through August 31
Running time: 90 minutes
Tickets: $39 – $119
Written by Doménica Feraud
Directed by Tatiana Pandiani.
Scenic design by dots, costume design by Siena Zoë Allen, lighting design by Oona Curley, sound design by Mikaal Sulaiman
Cast: Gamze Ceylan as Evelyn, Alison Cimmet as Nelle, Delia Cunningham as Jude, Shakur Tolliver as Julian, Ana Cruz Kayne as Lily, and Damian Young as Thom.
