Most people have heard of the term "existentialist crisis." Even more people have had one or know someone who has. Those lucky enough to have avoided the questions that signify an onset of an existentialist crisis are usually on the cusp of their very own. That's why Live Arts' production of Thom Pain (based on nothing) is so appealing -- it's the story of every one of our so-called lives.
What was once only a 1940s French movement, brokered by Sartre, Camus and their female counterpart Simone de Beauvoir, existentialism is now a 21st century general malaise. Writer Will Eno took this affliction in 2005 and molded it into the monologue of Thom Pain. Mr. Pain is a middle-aged Everyman who, throughout the monologue, describes his life and the human condition in our current era of TV dinners and miscommunication. Through Thom Pain, Eno explores concepts of human freedom, the freedom to feel and the freedom to think -- the main tenets of existentialism.
His story begins with a boy -- a boy whose dog dies after a thunderstorm. Why is this dog's death and this boy's life important? It marks the point of the boy's childhood, a rite of passage we all complete.
"When did your childhood end?" Pain questions. "How badly did you get hurt, when you did, when you were this little, when you were this wee little hurtable thing, nothing but big eyes, a heart, a few hundred words? Isn't it wonderful how we never recover?"
The scene conjures images of I Heart Huckabees, another existentialist comedy, especially the scene where Caterine unearths the secret of the death of Albert's cat. In Thom Pain, this instance, this inability to recover, is the crux of the 60-minute monologue and of the subsequent traumas in the boy's life.
The monologue is performed by actor Bill LeSueur (who has collaborated with Live Arts on several endeavors) in their black-box theater. The black-box setting is perfect for the monologue as the existentialist genre lends itself to minimalism. The theater acts as a blank canvas for the poignant words and graphic descriptions offered by the script.
There are few props (a chair, a cigarette lighter, a dictionary), which Thom Pain uses to "define some terms," "fear" being a chief one among these. Another prop, a plywood cutout, acts as Thom Pain's shadow in the dimly lit space. The biggest prop of all is the theater itself. The small size of the theater gives the production the feel of an intimate conversation. The lack of the fourth wall emphasizes the emotion of the play and the feeling that one is listening to a one-sided conversation.
"I think the most pleasure I get out of doing this is the closeness," LeSueur said. "It's such an unusual play for an actor that you're so close to the audience, you're looking at them, they're looking at you. And you really do, you assess that connection so much faster than you do with other plays where the fourth wall is unbroken. That's been the most noteworthy thing."
Any flaws in Thom Pain lie not with the actor or the production but with the script itself. Eno's script was nominated and became a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This nomination earned him accolades as a Samuel Beckett for the modern set. But Thom Pain is no Waiting for Godot. It is filled with description and forces the audience to imagine a scene apart from the sole actor on stage.
"I think he's hoping that people will resonate with certain images," stage manager Kathryn Stolzenbach said. "That there'll be certain things that strike home with them. I think he's really just trying to hit that human touch."
While thought-provoking and interesting, jarring leaps in continuity fracture some of the intensity offered by the script. Pain would often speak to the audience about one subject only to turn away and brush it aside. These instances disjointed the action and emotion of the monologue. Then there were times when Pain addressed some unseen lighting technician or withdrew within himself; the affect was a jarring remembrance that you were watching a play.
While Thom Pain was pithy and shone at several moments, it just wasn't memorable. Some of its flaws come in the vagueness of the script lines that masquerade as half-finished introductions to a profound suggestion the audience is supposed to complete.
Eno attempts to draft a view of a Kafkaesque tangle of fear and the modern condition of identity loss and isolation, essentially, the modern mind. The result is, at times, brilliant. At other times, it is all too clear that Thom Pain walks a fine line between existentialist comedy and common cynicism, and does not always err on the right side of it.
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