Dana H, by Lucas Hnath, is a rather unusual piece of theatre.  The sole actor, Jordan Baker, lip synchs to tapes of Dana Higginbotham (Lucas’ mother) being interviewed by Steve Cosson.  In these interviews she relates the events of five months of her life where she was kidnapped and held prisoner by a psychotic member of a racist criminal gang.

It’s fundamentally the story of a very damaged woman caught up in a set of circumstances that are badly exacerbated by a deeply dysfunctional state and society (Florida in the recent past).  Dana was abused as a child, dabbled with Satanism and when we meet her is a hospice chaplain with rather esoteric views on end-of-life care.  She’s also going through a divorce which gets her fired because divorce is a “sin” in her milieu.  So now she’s alone without contacts or supports and is being stalked by a former client, Jim, who is a violent felon and member of the Aryan Brotherhood.  Essentially he comes into her life because after his discharge from a psych unit after a suicide attempt he is unable to return to his halfway house because he is on psych meds which the halfway house organisation considers “Satanic”.  When he kidnaps her no-one notices her disappearance and she has no-one to turn to.

During their five months together Jim, besides regularly beating Dana up, commits multiple crimes including murder.  When there are encounters with law enforcement, and there are many, the cops find ways to avoid taking action because, essentially, law enforcement is controlled by the Brotherhood.  Eventually, Dana, broken and broke, does engineer an escape and lives to record her story.

It’s the story of an isolated person who needs support in a society (for want of a better word) that doesn’t provide any.  It’s the ideal conservative universe where as a former British PM put it “Society does not exist”. The populace is, apparently, quite happy that its law enforcement is run by criminal racists and thinks it makes sense to outsource its inadequate social services to religious nutters.  The consequences are someone else’s problem.

So it’s pretty grim but it’s been turned into compelling theatre by Baker and director Les Waters.  The set is a motel room and most of the time Dana is sitting in a chair talking to us with the disembodied voice of her interviewer piped to us too.  It’s quite hard to believe that Jordan Baker is lip synching because she has really become Dana H in a rather extraordinary way.  Her story telling is far more allusive than my stark plot summary suggests.  Often the key information is revealed in a deprecatory off hand remark, like Dana claiming she was better able to take Jim’s abuse because she had been beaten so much as a child.  This, of course, just adds to the horror and it’s very effective.  The one time we don’t just see Dana is during her “escape” when the motel room becomes animated with violent sounds and lights and then a maid nonchalantly clears away the bloodied bed sheets.  If ever there was proof that, with horror, less is more this piece provides it.

It’s quite a short one act (75 minute) drama.  It’s intense and very disturbing.  I wouldn’t take small kids but I would tape Conservative politicians to the seats and force them to watch it.  Dana H runs at Factory Theatre until April 7th.

Photo credits: John Lauener