BWW Reviews: Georgia Engel is Endearing and Creepy in Annie Baker's JOHN

Like Neil Simon and David Mamet before her, there are enough recognizable components established so that theatregoers and satirists alike can now quickly define an Annie Baker play.

There's the commitment to natural pacing that results in multiple instances of text-prolonging silence, the menial tasks characters perform repeatedly (also in silence), the scenes that take place offstage with muffled conversations the audience can't understand, the oblique dialogue that continually circles around points without landing on them and the information contained in the script that's never revealed to the audience.

There are a couple of new ones in John, very handsomely mounted by her steady collaborator, director Sam Gold. A novel approach to opening and closing the curtain helps define a character. A false ending to one of the acts is less effective.

A recent Pulitzer-winner for The Flick, Annie Baker is undoubtedly emerging as an important voice in American theatre. This review of her newest is typed by a playgoer who admires her experimentation, finds her initial ideas interesting, but is consistently disappointed and disinterested while sitting through her lengthy productions. As with The Flick (and, to a lesser extent, Circle Mirror Transformation) her desire to replace the elevated realism of theatre with naturally-paced, indirect dialogue can have an alienating effect that diminishes the impact of her storytelling.

The play's Gettysburg bed and breakfast townhouse setting is magnificently executed by designer Mimi Lien; a combination of classic and kitschy accented with seasonal decorations for the upcoming Christmas holiday. An interesting feature is that the set stretches to both ends of the very wide stage so that even from the back of the house it's often difficult to take in the whole playing area at once.

As the inn's owner, who likes to be called Kitty, Georgia Engel gives the kind of performance we're accustomed to seeing from her; the comforting purr of a voice, the gentle mannerisms and the genial expression of child-like wonder. Her qualities are put to especially good use in her endearing and, ultimately, a bit creepy performance as the eager-to-please proprietress who may be quite a bit more than she appears. There's a clue given in the character's last name, but while it appears in the script, it's never mentioned in the play.

Kitty's sole guests at the moment are an unmarried couple going through a rough patch; the intellectual bully Elias (Christopher Abbott) and the passive-aggressive Jenny (Hong Chau). The wonderful Lois Smith plays Kitty's comically outspoken friend, Genevieve, who is blind.

The home has a gruesome history, having been used as a Union hospital that needed every inch of space possible, so amputated limbs were piled up outside. It also has a player piano that seems to turn itself on and off at will.

Kitty mentions her sick husband staying upstairs, but nobody sees or hears any sign of him. She describes one room that she doesn't rent as being a "problem" and the journal she keeps is filled with handwritten gibberish.

One would think that the odd conversations and curious events that pop up throughout the evening would be building to something, but the dangling clues don't add up and the open-ended questions go unresolved. As far as the title is concerned, John can refer to a few things, none of which are significant enough to warrant naming the play for it.

Perhaps the title is another one of Baker's dangling clues.

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