Review: TH IR DS at Zephyr Theatre

TH IR DS is the world premiere of a new dystopian drama at the Zephyr Theatre on Melrose through September 29th.  Reminiscent of Amazon’s alternate history show The Man in the High Castle, the premise is exciting and fertile: what would happen if the Civil War never occurred?

There are boldly thought-provoking and perceptive, genuinely funny moments in TH IR DS.  It has great ambition, exploring timely issues of public policy, fractured unity, rising polarization, and rabid antisemitism.

The play is based on an idea by casting director and acting teacher Deborah Aquila.  Written by actor Ben Edlin, also playing West Coast bureaucrat David Cohen, TH IR DS is a dystopian, alternate history bureaucratic nightmare about the seceded South that aims to reflect our own times back at us.

“Throughout the writing of this play, I’ve put most of what I think and feel about these subjects in the mouths of the characters you’re about to meet,” playwright Ben Edlin explains in the program.  This is where things begin to go south (ha!).  Like medieval morality plays or those giant Ayn Rand doorstoppers, TH IR DS mummifies its characters as caricatures and philosophical mouthpieces.  The classic midcentury play and film Inherit the Wind and the more recent Heroes of the Fourth Turning are rare examples of this intellectual and political genre bursting to electrifying, organic life on stage.   

I love the ideas TH IR DS wants to explore.  I probably could have a lot of fascinating conversations with the producers, playwright and cast about them. On the merit of its ideas alone, I would like to sing its praises and applaud its boldness and intent.  But what we have on stage at the Zephyr Theatre is a bit of a mess, while having a lot of interesting things on its mind.  

Playwright Ben Edlin is not the caliber of playwright this material demands, and the play struggles with dramatizing its ideas.  There is a lazy chicken-fried phoniness in the view of the South in TH IR DS, like everyone just binge watched Coal Miner’s Daughter and To Kill A Mockingbird and called it a day.  

We spend much of the first act of TH IR DS watching two bureaucrats having a phone conversation at opposite ends of the stage, then watching a fictional documentary film that is projected onto a wall.  The amount of exposition in TH IR DS is staggering.  I have a hard time getting excited about the meeting of bureaucrats to discuss a pan-American water pipeline, the dramatic apotheosis of TH IR DS.

Clean water is a vital issue of public policy and health, but it feels like an odd choice for this play to hang its hat on.  Much of the South is known for being one of the rainier and wetter places in the US, especially compared to California’s endless droughts, so the South struggling to have clean water does not come immediately to mind when I think of what could possibly go wrong in a seceded South.

In the fictional documentary film projected within the play, a tweedy historian (a wonderful Derek Webster) gives talking points about the play's alternate history and the dire water situation in the Confederate States.  There is bizarre, "undercover" faux documentary footage from the seceded South, of a young, supposedly Southern couple (Tess Harrison and Éanna O’Dowd) falling apart with no clean water.  

Why are we watching a long fake documentary film projected on a wall during a play?  And why is there nothing remotely Southern about it?  It is a strange, tinted pastiche of picturesque, gauzy suffering, played by an actress from upstate New York and an actor from Ireland, with a cinematographer from Austria who is known for her work for Dove, Avon, and Head+Shoulders shampoo.

Carlo Mancasola as slippery Southern bureaucrat James Cross is so smugly racist and self-consciously evil I kept waiting for him to twirl his mustache.  You could play a fun drinking game trying to count the number of times he says “boy.”

It is all the more impressive to me in this context that Brian Yeun gives a powerhouse performance as a caring Southern bureaucrat.  Yeun handles Edlin’s cerebral, disorienting dialogue with finesse, realism, and a total lack of self-consciousness.  There is so much truthfulness, detail, and quiet depth in what Yeun does.  Yeun’s subtly great accent work stands out as diligent and delicate in a production where actors slip in and out of their shake-and-bake Southern drawls as they get distracted by the business of acting.

Brian Yeun’s staggeringly great performance is a gift. In fact, it makes me wonder if switching up the cast would fix a number of things in TH IR DS.  The common thread throughout the play seems to be a connection to the Aquila Studio acting school. 

There are ambitious scenes and genuinely funny moments, and a lovely, textured camaraderie and energized repartee that emerges between Brian Yeun and Ben Edlin. 

Yet occasionally performances can veer off into that marinated acting class territory.  Actors ease themselves into a tenderizing oil of self-conscious significance, churning and pausing and chewing syllables.  I know this 1950s style of acting with a capital A is still in vogue in some circles, but it gave me woozy PTSD flashbacks to doing my own time in Meisner classes.  There is questionable direction from Deborah Aquila’s daughter, director and painter Jessica Aquila Cymerman.

Even a gorgeous, charismatic and lively Corbin Reid, with a stunning, impressive resume that includes American Idiot, Rent, and Sister Act on Broadway, seems inhibited (possibly by the confines of a character who seems out of focus, a slightly evil, peppy, superheroine spin on Kamala Harris).

Stagecraft is terrific, with superb lighting and impressively rich detail in the staging and beautifully designed props from Jeff G. Rack and Derrick McDaniel.

While it struggles in execution, TH IR DS’ core theme is a vital question: what would happen if we focused on human decency and basic human needs, rather than the trigger-happy invective, hate, and polarization that only profit political machines and commercial greed?  TH IR DS is a bit of a mess, but it is a bold play, and I applaud its intent, its thoughtfulness, big ideas and ambition.

Photos by Jeff Lorch

TH IR DS runs at the Zephyr Theatre through September 29th.  The Zephyr Theatre is located at 7456 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. There is street parking.  You can get tickets by clicking the button below:

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