Review: Deirdre O'Connell Is Extraordinary in Lucas Hnath's Very Personal Docudrama DANA H.

It's been said that movies are made in the editing room. To some extent, the same might be said of Lucas Hnath's unconventional, and very personal docudrama, Dana H.

The playwright whose flair for clever exchanges has brought a kind of highbrow hipness to Broadway with fare such as A DOLL'S HOUSE, PART 2 and HILLARY AND CLINTON didn't write a word spoken in the 75-minute piece that just opened at the Vineyard. They were supplied by his mother, Dana Higginbotham.

Yes, an explanation is in order. Several years ago, Steve Cosson, Artistic Director of The Civilians - those investigative theatre-makers who create art out of journalism - recruited Hnath to devise a theatre piece in the company's documentary style, unaware that the playwright's mother was the victim of an incredible and horrifying act of human cruelty.

It was 1997 and Hnath was in his first year at NYU. Higginbotham, a nondenominational chaplain living in Florida who worked with the terminally ill and people with psychiatric disorders, was recently divorced from her husband and fired from her job for an infuriating reason. It was just before the time when the growth of social media would drastically broaden human communication, so, as pointed out, she wasn't suspiciously missing from any obligations or demonstrating a noticeable lack of presence when a patient named Jim, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, kidnapped her.

The story of her five-month long ordeal, when Jim would drive her all over Florida and across state lines and, being a felon, use her identity to buy guns while carrying out his business as a member of the feared organized crime syndicate, was told to Cosson in a lengthy series of recorded interviews.

Hnath then supervised the editing down of the raw audio into a soundtrack for the stage production, which is lip-synched by Obie and Drama Desk Award winning actor Deirdre O'Connell as she sits in a downstage chair in designer Andrew Boyce's motel room setting for the entire performance.

There are no videos or projections to embellish the storytelling. And for most of the performance, there are no extreme lighting effects by designer Paul Toben except for the blackouts that divide the play into three sections. The most dramatic contribution from sound designer Mikhail Fiksel is the occurrence of quick beeps that designate when audio has been edited out. So it's primarily O'Connell serving as the artistic conduit between the audience and Higginbotham's truth.

It's truly a horror story, but unlike instances where someone, say, may be locked in a basement for an extended period of time, Higginbotham describes feeling helpless and trapped as she and Jim were continually out and among people who knew and liked him. She describes seeing Jim having friendly conversations with police officers who knew perfectly well who he was (or recognized the significance of the designs of his tattoos), and, despite the visual evidence of her abuse, privately advised her that if she asked for their help, they could only detain him for a short period of time and that it's her word against his. And no, despite phone communication, her son didn't suspect a thing.

On a purely technical level, O'Connell is striking. Listening to the soundtrack through earphones, her lip-syncing seems a completely organic vessel for Higginbotham's recorded voice, so exacting in pantomiming each word, cough, chuckle and wordless expression.

But the novelty of the performance gives way to the emotional textures the actor supplies through facial and bodily expressions. As she tells the story, you can feel that she's still trying to make sense of it, particularly seeming defensive during moments where one who doesn't understand her perception of her surroundings at that time might question her hesitancy to take advantage of opportunities to escape.

The horrific part of the story that O'Connell brings out so vividly is that Higginbotham, by profession and by soul, feels extraordinary empathy for others; a beautiful quality that, when manipulated by an abuser, can leave her questioning who really is the victim.