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Puzzling Play Keeps It Surreal

By KATHY L. GREENBERG

Tribune correspondent

Published: February 19, 2009

Every day is a new reality in Lee Blessing's "A Body of Water." Stageworks and Gorilla Theatre co-produced this fascinating work, in which truth is massaged and manipulated until it is virtually unrecognizable.

Directed by Anna Brennen, the play is a psychological puzzle of sorts and each piece symbolizes another. At first it seems a surrealist adventure. Then it shifts into a menacing murder mystery, followed by a drama of memory loss and identity crises. The kicker is that each of these scenarios exists only in the moment that it is enacted. Past and future are irrelevant, while the present changes as fluidly as a river current.

It's all rather maddening.

Moss (Jim Wicker) and Avis (Monica Merryman) wake up in a beautiful summerhouse surrounded by trees and water. They have no idea who or where they are. Nameless, they can only guess at their relationship to each other.

Then a young woman arrives and says her name is Wren (Barbara Eaker). She seems to hold the key to Moss and Avis' identity, but she toys with them, gently chastising them for playing dumb. The problem is that they aren't playing.

Wren eventually confirms their identities and something more: Their 11-year-old daughter has been murdered, and these two did it. Now Moss and Avis' amnesia morphs from a benign nuisance into an unbelievable defense. The horrific crime of which they're accused doesn't change their mental state; it only alters the reality in which they exist - a reality that Wren is clearly orchestrating.

But wait. Was a crime committed? Is Wren a lawyer, or is she in fact Moss and Avis' daughter? The visible clues and the intangible information that Wren provides once again mutate. What was sinister is now a sad state of dementia - a mental decomposition that neither Moss nor Avis can control.

Beautifully directed and acted, "A Body of Water" is as deep or as superficial as the theatergoer allows. Brennen and cast, so comfortable with Blessing's interpretation of the unfathomable mind, let the audience take and leave at will. In this case, it's best to do a bit of both.