SLAC’S The Exit Interview–Enter Here!

by Joel Applegate

Playwright William Missouri Downs has managed a paradoxical slight of hand in The Exit Interview.

Cloaked though they are in dark, delicious comedy, the subjects of this play are all deadly serious. Media and culture are examined and criticized generally – and by this playwright – for packaging human events into digestible data. Yet Downs himself packs the serious into a round-about of comic jolts we recognize as being us collectively, and maybe us personally.

This play is for the mature teen or adult (not mutually exclusive). Cheerleaders gird us for what’s to come with an “Offensive Cheer”. It’s a prelude and a warning – like your car telling you to fasten your seat belt when your bum triggers the sensor. Their first cheer wraps up with “Screw realism!” OK. I think I’m up for this…

Small Talk vs Big Problems – is this what the play is about? I think so. And it’s all hung around a funny and maddening exit interview. Dick – an agnostic if you need a label – is a college professor who’s been sacked. His interview is conducted by Eunice, a religious brass tack, who is yet a sardonic woman. During all this time a lone shooter is closing in toward them, making his way from the Ronald Reagan Cafeteria, forcing the campus into lock-down. That’s the catalyst. The two protagonists will come to react according to their own lights.

Lest that sounds too grim for a truly fun night of theater, don’t believe it! Playwright Downs paints in many colors and openly uses Brechtian devices to change direction and tone. In the 1920’s,German playwright Bertolt Brecht pioneered the idea that the audience invest in what they were watching. Director John Caywood just as ably holds up the proverbial mirror to Utah audiences. It’s not just fictional characters exploring the “big questions”. The audience is invited – maybe even forced – to recognize that there’s no separation between them and us.

Brecht’s theater sought to represent life as it is – interrupting, absurd, unknowable – not merely, or just, escapism. Break into song, change the script, remind the audience that “we know you’re out there.” The play is interrupted in both acts for “rewrites”; the stage manager comes on with new pages; the actors adopt German accents. In a further nod to Brecht, Downs supplies hilarious, pertinent lyrics regarding prayer to Kurt Weil’s “Mack the Knife.”

So what are the big questions raised in the interview? The professor has questions about life’s purpose that Eunice summarily dismisses as having a bad sense of humor. Instead of serious topics, Eunice asks whether the now unemployed professor, Dick (“please, it’s Richard”) has any parking tickets or overdue library books. The trivial becomes the important, because serious subjects – sex, religion, politics – are “conversation stoppers”. What’s actually important in our real lives has become really too dangerous to discuss in public. The point is this: we should be discussing them. It’s all existential angst. “You’re not allowed to ask questions until page six”.

For The Exit Interview”, SLAC is one of the participating theaters in a “Rolling World Premiere.” As part of a relatively new way of promoting new work, the National New Play Network each season organizes separately timed runs rotating through several theaters. William Missouri Downs attended the performance at SLAC Friday, April 12^th, and has seen other productions as they are mounted during the year.

As for SLAC’s mounting, Kevin Myhre’s trademark sets are usually minimalist, but ergo-metrically designed. This one is defined by pleasingly reddish color-blocks amid a door and a platform. Literal signs of the times are posted such as “Research vs. Revelation” and “I Did It vs. The Devil Made me Do It” which render the atmosphere anything but subtle.

The lighting is always great, particularly here with James M. Craig’s strategic use of projections. The acting spaces are variously lit, taking us to different times and places.

Dick, the intellectual professor is played by Darrin Doman. He’s wry, sincere and has a nice singing voice, too. We commiserate with poor Dick’s sense of defeat that comes from fighting the institutionally irrational. He yearns to discover his own purpose, not a “second hand purpose inherited from our parents in the form of religion.” He asks all the significant questions, while the interviewer answers with bromides of divine will. “How do you know you’re correctly reading the mind of God?” he asks. “Do you realize how narcissistic that is?”

As Eunice, Nell Gwynn just wants to get the job done. She gives a good, stout performance, helping us understand that faith is an important part of who she is. Gwynn manages to make her pride in her “survivor collage” both naïve and poignant. But in dodging Dick’s searching questions, she’s forced into a kind of secular epiphany. Though devout, a frustrated Eunice grouses, “We would rather guess than learn…”

The four other actors in the piece play many multiple roles, each with a primary character most of their stage time. As the ultimate smarmy reporter, Terence Goodman is excellent. Excellent enough to trigger disgust. People’s stories get filtered through his TV camera and come out unidentifiable. If he can’t get an exclusive to the actual event, the real story is sacrificed to triviality and hype.

Marin Kohler and Cassandra Stokes-Wylie wowed and charmed us as energetic cheerleaders, their hilarious routines book-ending the acts. Their commitment to “school spirit” is TOTAL. Their cheerfulness is exhausting. Kohler is great as the professor’s girlfriend, pacing her lines well, and varying her delivery appropriate to the particular character she played. As Kohler’s conservative “Mom”, Stokes-Wylie’s frustration felt like revenge: “To be able to speak and not say anything is an art.”

Bijan Hosseini in multiple roles was a riot, nailing each one. He worked hard, had fun, and impressed us with his ability to disappear into each character. He did it so thoroughly that I had to connect the dots to differentiate one of his characters from another. My favorite line he uttered: “Update your FB page before you start shooting.”

I’m always grateful for daring theater in Utah. I have been a subscriber to SLAC in the past and the great thing about going to a performance there is the consistent quality, fresh new works and, as always, the opportunity to think. The Exit Interview makes thinking fun. I urge you to go get your fair share of some invigoratingly honest laughs.

The venue is a converted LDS chapel from the turn of the 19^th Century, and is nice and clean with sparkling restrooms. However, it not equipped for wheelchairs, although a stair lift has been installed. Assistance will be provided if you call ahead. There’s a great greenroom for early patrons, with an art show usually displayed on the lower level below the main stage. There’s plenty of ample parking at Washington Elementary School directly across from the theater on 200 West and 500 North.

Performances are through April 10 – May 5, 2013 with curtain at 7:30 pm, Wednesday through Saturday, and Sunday at 1:00 pm and 6:00 pm. Two acts, one intermission.

Tickets: Call for prices. They range from low $20s to $40s, depending on week night or weekend.

Show is selling well, so get your tickets early.

Box Office 801.363.7522

Salt Lake Acting Company

168 West 500 North

Salt Lake City, Utah 84103

www.saltlakeactingcompany.org