Phillyist Reviews... The Mystery Plays

The Mystery Plays by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, currently being staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Workshop, is an interesting work to wrap your head around: it is, at first at least, quite literally an evening of related-but-not-too-closely-linked mystery plays—two, to be exact. Only, they're not quite mystery plays: the first one is a tale of the supernatural that combines Hitchcock with George Romero—there is mystery there, but it seems almost secondary to the creepiness; the second, a family drama, is less a mystery than the story behind a cold case. The play is simultaneously exactly what its title indicates, and not what the title indicates at all.

The first play tells the tale of a young filmmaker who, for reasons he doesn't completely understand, gets off a train at the wrong stop and its forced to take a later train, only to discover that the first train caught fire and derailed, killing all on board. From there, the filmmaker, Joe Manning (played by Dallas Drummond) begins to experience a number of strange occurrences: a man (Benjamin Kanes) with whom he flirted on the train shortly before disembarking is haunting him, and his eyesight is fading without explanation. To say any more would be to reveal too much.

The second play is about Abby Gilley (Jennifer Nehila), who we found out in the first play is Joe Manning's best friend, lawyer, and ex-girlfriend. Abby is headed to her hometown in Oregon, where we discover she'll be speaking with the public defenders representing her brother (Dylan Clements), jailed for sixteen years since bludgeoning his parents and youngest sister to death. This is all explained to us early on, and the majority of the play is told in flashbacks: the events leading up to and immediately following that fateful night. The parents' deaths, though shocking, seem completely justified, but why Abby's brother would kill their sister is rather puzzling. Unfortunately, it's a mystery that's never resolved, just speculated on. The most mysterious moment in Abby's story is actually something that happens offstage: the presumed visit paid to the Gilley's funeral plot by Joe Manning. For all the shock and thrills of the first half of the evening, this, the second half, falls flat.

Tying the two acts together is Mister Mystery (Matt Lorenz), a Rod Serling-like narrator who tells us about the nature of mystery and serves as catalyst for one or two significant moments, but his presence is inconsistent and other big things happen when he's not onstage. He's effective when present, forgotten when not, and not utilized as well as he might have been.

Rounding out the cast is Polly MacIntyre, who provides some much needed comic relief in the first act as Amanda, Joe's rather stereotypical agent. Unfortunately, the comic relief doesn't extend into the second half of the show, which may help explain why it's less successful. Had the show intertwined the two stories' plots, or had the second story been scrapped completely with some changes to the first, the show certainly would have been more satisfying.

That being said, the show is worth seeing, if only for Joe Manning's story—which you might end up dreaming about. Director Bill Felty understood both the material and the cast and played to their strengths nicely—a good thing, considering that each actor played no fewer than three parts, often switching between them in the span of half a scene. The actors, likewise, did the best they could with the uneven script, and even when the script started to falter, the actors never did.

Image via the Philadelphia Theatre Workshop website.