Review - The Tenant

It's inevitable that The Woodshed Collective's The Tenant, a site-specific theatrical interpretation of Roland Topor's novella via Roman Polanski's film adaptation, will be compared with the downtown hit, Sleep No More. Both require audience members to freely walk through several floors of rooms, exploring the contents and running into actors playing out scenes. But despite its less elaborate production values, I found The Tenant to be a far superior and much more entertaining experience.

Whereas the buzz about Sleep No More indicates that there's a great deal of luck involved in finding a stimulating evening of theatre in its 100 rooms (I myself, despite my enthused exploring, witnessed only about 15 minutes worth of scene work and little more of interest during my three-hour stay.), The Tenant is a tightly woven ninety minute psychological thriller, played in the compact environs of West-Park Presbyterian Church, where 23 actors are continually tempting spectators to travel from one intriguing scenario to another.

It begins in a cramped little lounge, where the audience sees a short, silent orientation film followed by a quick scene in a Paris hospital room where a grim-faced building concierge (Lynne Rosenberg) tends to the expiring body of one of her tenants, who tried committing suicide by jumping out a window. She's interrupted by a quiet gentleman named Trelkovsky (Michael Crane), who inquires about the availability of the dying woman's room.

From there, the audience members are free to roam around the building as the company plays out six different interlocking narratives, written separately by Bekah Brunstetter, Sarah Burgess, Paul Cohen, Dylan Dawson, Steven Levenson and Tommy Smith. Each section centers on one or more residents of the building. There's the demanding elderly lady (Judith Greentree) being cared for by her crippled daughter (Jocelyn Kuritsky), the manipulations of the building's landlords (Dan Cozzens and Molly Ward), the grim goings-on in a wig shop where the album cover of The Rolling Stones' "Some Girls" is prominently displayed and the daily gossip and gathering at an outdoor café. The Common ground of each scenario is that Trelkovsky is gradually coming to the conclusion that his room's previous occupant was driven to suicide by the other tenants and now they intend to do the same to him.

Co-directed by Teddy Bergman and Stephen Brackett, the terse dialogue of the moody evening is played with delicious aloofness, even when audience members are standing inches away from the actors. Music by Duncan Sheik and David Van Tieghem, as well as sound design by Brandon Wolcott, subtly adds to the tension and designer Gabriel Hainer Evansohn provides the wonderfully dingy settings for the dilapidated residence.

You won't see all of the play in one visit, although you can follow a character and experience one entire section. But sound travels easily in the venue and while you're watching a conversation in one room you may want to go investigate that loud commotion you hear from down the hall. Or, while sitting in the café, you might notice an attractive woman undressing in the window above and be tempted to go upstairs and see what that's all about. Each room also has a video screen or television and at set moments there are film clips that catch everyone up on important events. Throughout the evening there was never more than a minute or two of time when I didn't run into an actor doing something interesting, even if it was just pushing me out of the way so he could run into the shower and throw up.

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