Deep Blue Sound Off-Broadway Reviews

To the credit of the author—and to director Arin Arbus and the entire cast—each of these characters come across as warmly human, flaws and all. Is Ella the primary character of the play? Or is it just that the always-astonishing Maryann Plunkett is playing the role, and when Maryann Plunkett speaks—or even sits alone in the light, clearly thinking but unable to express the words—you can’t help but be riveted.

Koogler’s brilliant play captures a fundamental contradiction at the center of modern living — our yearning to engage with those around us as well as our fear that we might be rejected or dismissed. Deep Blue Sound is a perceptive parable for our divided age, a reminder that those who work up the gumption to try to save the whales may have a better target far closer to home: themselves.

Director Arin Arbus stages the slap-dash town meetings—everyone talking over everyone else, engaging with each other but also addressing the audience—with orchestral precision; in the Public’s 99-seat Shiva Theater, you’ll be able to hear every gossipy aside and under-the-breath quip. Koogler, whose plays include last year’s Staff Meal and the Obie-winning Fulfillment Center (2018)—manages to strike that ever-so-delicate balance of poking a bit of fun at colorful characters while also appreciating what lies beneath. It’s Our Town meets Northern Exposure, with a dash of Gilmore Girls (town selectman Taylor and mayor Annie are true kindred spirits).

In its spareness and dreamy drift from fragmentary scene to direct address, director Arin Arbus’s superbly focused and balanced production inevitably brings to mind Our Town, but with ecological dread and greater social anomie. The ghost of Thornton Wilder surely perched on Koogler’s shoulder during the composition. This current production remounts the one Clubbed Thumb premiered in Summerworks two years ago and remains a model of less-is-more eloquent restraint.