Review: YOUR NAME MEANS DREAM at Theater J

Nowadays and in the near future, androids apparently dream of a great deal more than electric sheep, according to José Rivera's accomplished two-hander, Your Name Means Dream at Theater J through April 6. Stacy, the artificial life form rented by Aislin's son to look after his 74 year old mother, is no ordinary robot. She really does contain multitudes and can quote Aislin's favorite Whitman at the drop of a hat as well as Groucho, Pablo Neruda, and Joe Pesci's character from Goodfellas. She can check Aislin's vitals with a tap on the arm, and she's way ahead of Data in the telling of jokes department. Like him, Stacy wants to evolve, but her prime directive is to help Aislin improve the quality of her life, which, as the play begins, seems to depend a little too much on pills, Jack Daniels, and a cranky inner life.

Naomi Jacobson embodies the terminally irritable Aislin with vigorous detail. Her crustiness covers her isolation and much else, including significant self-anger. But Stacy has more staying power than Aislin's previous string of underpaid, human attendants, so Aislin has to change, and watching her do so has many moving moments. Risa Ando's splendidly dumpy costumes for her in Act I lead to presentability in Act II, and Misha Kachman's set strewn with Pamela Weiner's props likewise tidies up under the housekeeping ways of Stacy.

Every theatregoer has a little list: Dame Julie singing "I could have danced all night" at the Mark Hellinger Theatre; Dame Angela as Mrs. Lovett; Suzanne Farrell in Diamonds; John Raitt as Billy Bigelow; Jennifer Holliday telling us she is not going. From start to finish, Sara Koviak's performance as Stacy joins this list of uniquely unforgettable original portrayals. Stacy and Aislin have a fight in Act II (what else is new?). But something different happens in this one; it's unclear what or why or whether Aislin accidentally triggered her with a truth that wasn't in the programming, but Stacy's heuristics seem to have some sort of short circuity event. Rivera has written a torrent of language for her which resembles Lucky's monologue when he "thinks" in Beckett's Waiting for Godot--except that Stacy's words make a kind of sense (which Lucky's do not which was Beckett's point, in spite of the tennis), and Koviak, also a gifted choreographer, dances the piece while she speaks it, and she and it are simply brilliant. This is why no one ever translates coup de theatre.

Rivera, who has also directed this very crisp, two-hour production, includes some voice-overs in the script that don't really convince that there has been some sort of societal inclusion of Stacy and her fellow "skin jobs." Rather, the real qua real world Stacy occupies along with the all too real Aislin seems to be a universe which might come to accept intelligence that evolves past artificiality. Today's audience does not require news flashes to experience that possibility thanks to Jacobson and Koviak.

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