BWW Reviews: Nina Raine's TRIBES Profound and Powerful at Actors Theatre

"They may not be perfect, but they're family."

This is the affirmation that's just as much a prison sentence at that heart of "Tribes," Nina Raine's socially-charged, densely-layered and devastatingly on-point drama now playing at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

With "Tribes," which won numerous best-play awards upon its 2012 premiere, Raine has achieved a dichotomy that is at once intellectual and primal. She explores many different modes of communication and their function as everything from identity and solace to mediator, barrier, and weapon. She also presents the ends, means and costs groups take on in transmitting values - in making more "us" than "them."

The play opens on a tempestuous dinner conversation in the home of Christopher, a man of letters, and Beth, a burgeoning mystery novelist. Their eldest children, Daniel and Ruth, have recently moved back home, and Christopher is plenty vocal, in the endearing way the phrase "How can I miss you if you won't go away?" demonstrates affection, about his desire that they get out and become productive.

Attempting to absorb it all is Billy, the youngest son. Billy is deaf, but Christopher and Ruth have made the effort to raise him as a "normal" child: teaching him to read and lip-read, and forgoing sign language. They love Billy, but his treatment resembles less an equally valued family member and more a pet at best (he uses a more choice and effective word in Act Two) and a parasite's host at worst. One night, Billy meets a woman named Sylvia, a planner for events supporting the deaf community, and his eyes are opened to both a new person and a new community through which he can realize more personally than he ever dreamed possible. Sylvia's influence on Billy upends the family's hermetically impervious lifestyle, with cataclysmic consequences for everyone.

Raine has created a play that is intelligent, intensely emotional, and illuminating in its use of of hearing-impaired communication as a level of conflict for the characters who use it and who refuse it. As Billy and Sylvia, Alex Olson and Claire Seibers use ASL well and do a splendid job of incorporating it as both a factor and tactic in their characters' struggle to be understood.

Consciously or not, Actors Theatre has put truthful storytelling as the focus of its productions in recent seasons, saving theatrical bells and whistles for tasteful accentuation, and director Evan Cabnet is spot-on in his balance of performer-centric realism and technical strokes. The family dynamic among the actors is as real as anything we've ever encountered behind our own front door. When the play sweeps into moments of hyperrealism, Cabnet makes brilliant use of the tools at his disposal. He uses a light box above the stage to project subtitles and, at a pivotal moment between two characters, subtext that will make or break their relationship. Amid the kitchen table drama, Cabnet and sound designer M. L. Dogg insert an adroit expression of Billy's experience of the world that is blunt-force jarring at the exact right moment. Fantastic direction in every aspect.

Raine gives the ensemble much to navigate, and they dive in with unflinching intention free of commentary on this exasperating clan. Olson aggressively and proudly explodes into a long-delayed manhood. He pulls as much sympathy as disappointment from us for going too far in his quest for independence. Siebers woos both Billy and the audience and embodies a telling reality of living as a second-class citizen among an interest group: she is going deaf, making her less in the estimation of those who were born so. Though her presence could be considered the conflict driver, she is less a villain than another frustrated soul in desperate circumstances. Siebers plays all Sylvia's complexities with crispness and heart.

As witheringly witty patriarch Christopher, John Judd plays a cantankerous firebrand with aplomb while attacking some of the play's most dexterous dialogue with gusto. He believes discipline to the point of abuse is best for keeping his family knit tight, and when the knot breaks, he shows the terrified and wounded heart that requires such a venomous exterior. Ryan Spahn's Daniel spends the most time with Billy, loving him, but using him as a crutch due to his many mental eccentricities. The character could stray into exhaustive self-pity easily, but Spahn makes the most of the cagey fighting spirit inherited from Christopher to keep Daniel dynamic and sympathetic. He is very much his father's son.

Monique Barbee brings a similar sadness tempered by sardonicism to Ruth. Her story gets somewhat lost in this great clash of wills, though the fact is entirely accurate for middle children so often left to their own devices in a tumultuous household. Credit to Barbee and Raine for understanding and accurately portraying this reality. Meg Thalken brings the necessary mix of strength, empathy (her go-to trait both as mother and novelist) and iron-braced spine to Beth in order to manage a family as frenzied as hers.

Coupled with its perennial Humana Festival offerings, Actors Theatre has of late selected a slate of recent works that are a dynamic combination of thought-provoking and crowd-pleasing. For a socially conscious market such as Louisville, "Tribes" takes a highly visible issue and probes beneath the surface, asking hard questions and leaving the audience with much to ponder. Art that achieves that level of immediacy has appeal far beyond tribal boundaries; it should be seen by all. Go see it.

TRIBES

By Nina Raine

At Actors Theatre of Louisville

Through December 7

For more information, go to www.actorstheatre.org

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