Liz Appel’s play Wights was premiered at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night in a production directed by Chris Abraham.  It’s a complex satire on Academia and academic relationships with a touch of comedy/horror; Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf with just a smidgeon of Shawn of the Dead.  And it takes place in the immediate run up to the 2024 US Presidential Election. with all the hopes and fears for the future packed into that.

It begins straightforwardly enough.  Anita (Rachel Leslie) is a Yale academic applying/auditioning for the post of an institute called something like The Centre for Retributive Redistribution.  The job is likely hers as she has the exact combination of persecution; she’a biracial woman, and mainstream academic cred; both parents were Yale professors and she’s a Yale PhD.  All boxes are ticked but there’s no danger of rocking the boat (luxury cruise liner?) where well fed academics churn out jargon filled papers that will be read by other academics while getting a warm glow of “doing something” while not engaging with anything as demeaning as politics or social action.

She is rehearsing her o so cutting presentation; Towards a Poetics of the Person, with two of her academic friends.  They are Bing; a Chinese born academic in much the same field (Richard Lee), and his Canadian partner Celine; also an academic (Sochi Fried).  They are arguing in almost understandable jargon about whether the presentation should include a land acknowledgement when Anita’s husband Danny (Ari Cohen) returns tired, hungry and somewhat overwrought (we shall discover why later) from a long day in court as a criminal defence lawyer, on this occasion succeeding in vacating a wrongful conviction for which someone has spent 22 years in prison.  He doesn’t like Bing and Celine (Punch and Judy) and he’s trying not to call academic bullshit but would really like something to eat.  There are a whole bunch of other plot threads concerning children, parents, exes and more that make unravelling what’s important and what’s not quite challenging.

There’s also an undercurrent.  The house they are in belonged to Anita’s parents but her stepmother willed it away.  She has just managed to scrape up the money to buy it which should happen at midnight but Danny has appropriated the money for well intentioned but problematic purposes  The real world and theoretical academic do-gooding collide with a very big crash..  End of Act 1.

The second half is something of a change of pace.  It gets very real.  Relations are breaking down.  Danny and Anita’s relationship takes on a weird sado-masochistic tinge.  There’s a long scene where Danny points out, loudly and at length, that most of the academic jargon being used has its origins in fairly screwed up US legal cases involving attempts to codify “race”.  Bing shows up to congratulate Anita on getting the job; which she hasn’t yet accepted.  Danny starts to show more disturbing physical and mental symptoms.  Something odd has happened to Celine and Bing must leave in a hurry.  It gets weirder and the comedy/horror element escalates.  The poison that lurks beneath the surface of US society is bubbling up as some kind of apocalyptic outbreak…

This “summary” contains maybe half of the ideas, situations and action that are packed so densely into two hours of stage action that I have a hard time conceiving anybody taking it all in.  That said it’s presented with some flair.  Abrahams’ direction is tight and pacey.  Lighting (Imogen Wilson) and sound design (Thomas Ryder Payne) are dramatic and sometimes even scary.  The acting is excellent.  Leslie is spectacular as a person who cannot grasp just how privileged she is and Cohen’s unravelling is disturbing in the extreme.  Support from Lee and Fried is excellent.

There’s so much to unpack here and much to like.  Arguably the writing is too dense; too much packed into the time available, but the dialogue is sharp and works as satire.  And ‘m really not sure about the zombie thing.  Reaction on opening night was quite subdued (opening nights are more usually greeted by whooping and hollering) suggesting that I wasn’t the only one who was in something of a state of shock wondering what I had just seen.  After hours of talking about it with my partner I feel I understand enough to write what I’ve written but that certainly wasn’t the case coming out of the theatre.  So, if seriously thinky plays that need hours of unpacking are your thing this is a very well done example.  Just don’t use it for an important romantic date…

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz.