Review: A Creepy ENOUGH TO LET THE LIGHT IN At Contemporary American Theater Festival

We are looking at the interior of a well-appointed, comfortable-looking living room, with a door that lets out onto the street. There is a couple at the door. We witness the householder inviting her lover inside at the conclusion of a date. We learn quickly that they have been an item for eight months. And then we learn that the lover has never been asked inside before. What? That’s actually pretty weird. Not only that, but before we’d even seen the two women, there had been an odd grinding noise, and inexplicable lights playing under the door of a cubbyhole under the stairs. Something is off here. But what?

The balance of the show, Enough to Let the Light In, by first-time playwright Paloma Nozicka, is devoted to digging out the answers to these questions and similar ones, and to determining what those answers will mean for the lovers. We are given to understand that the moment is pivotal for them; the visitor, Marc (Deanna Myers) has come prepared to propose marriage to Cynthia (Caroline Neff). And there is something else significant to Cynthia about the moment, though we do not learn until later what that significance may be.

Beyond making such a general summary, a reviewer must tread carefully. At the outset, we don’t even know where we are from a generic point of view. That is, this play might be a lethal thriller somewhat reminiscent of Gas Light or Deathtrap, or it might be a ghost story. Or possibly both. Or even something else. But even discussing those possibilities in any detail would spoil a number of big reveals. So I shall skip the kind of analysis a critic would ordinarily pursue at this point, and content myself mostly with some really general comments.

The play touches lightly on some deep subjects, including ontology and epistemology (in particular their relationship to religion), and also trauma and recovery. But one wouldn’t go to this play to stimulate thinking on any of these matters. It is fundamentally an entertainment and not a tract. Even when the characters debate these things, that debate is really in service of advancing the plot and rhythm of the play rather than edification of the audience or of taking sides. Still, that part is nicely done, and I appreciated it. And as is generally the best practice when weighty but unresolvable philosophical issues are woven into a play, this play doesn’t attempt to resolve them. And the ending of the play puts a nice exclamation point on that.

And I certainly appreciated the performances. Neither of these characters is totally believable – and maybe not seriously intended by the playwright to be so (for instance, why would Marc be so willing to pledge her future to a woman of whose home she has never once seen the inside?). But one does believe in the passion between them (a tip of the hat here to intimacy director Shura Baryshnikov, who lived up to an assignment in the script to convey the characters’ “scorching-hot chemistry with one another”). And we also believe in the sadness that weighs down the soul of one of them.

That sadness, and what has caused it, will prove to be the engine of the drama, and it will manifest itself most readily in the fights the characters keep verging upon having, notwithstanding their chemistry. And we know, even though we do not yet grasp why the fights keep threatening to break out, that if the underlying issue isn’t resolved, bad consequences will follow.

I should also say a nice word about the set, designed by Mara Ishihara Zinky. The script demands a highly interactive physical relationship between the characters and that set; it cannot be a mere backdrop. And this one is immense, taking out one whole bank of the bleachers that I’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the Marinoff Theater. The result is a quite credible living room, hallway, street door, and stairs going both up and down, articulated in various ways to accommodate hidey-holes where untoward things might be happening.

As a vehicle for making things go bump in the night, I’m not sure this show consistently hits the target. It is a bit too much of a human interest story for that, but a bit too bump-filled to work smoothly as a human interest story either. Yet there are some legitimate skin-crawling moments, and the story reaches as reasonable a conclusion as it can, taking into account the subject-matter and the indeterminacy of the ending I mentioned. Theatergoers may walk out arguing about that ending, which is probably a good thing. But it will in any event have been an entertaining ride reaching that point.

Enough to Let the Light In, by Palomina Nozicka, directed by Kimberly Senior, presented through July 28 by the Contemporary American Theater Festival, at the Marinoff Theater, 62 W. Campus Drive, Shepherdstown, WV. Tickets $70, $60 for seniors, available at https://catf.org/2024-play-enough-to-let-the-light-in-by-paloma-nozicka/#light-tickets, or at box office, boxoffice@catf.org.  Adult themes and language.

Production photo credit: Seth Freeman.

To post a comment, you must register and login.