Review: CRAZE at Tarragon Theatre

“Who’s afraid?” says advertising executive June (Lisa Ryder) to her younger husband Rene (Ali Kazmi) as they weather an apocalyptic-sounding storm in their palatial, marble-floored home. With this overt reference, playwrights Rouvan Silogix and Rafeh Mahmud make it clear their play CRAZE is going to riff off Edward Albee’s classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a battleground between an older couple at each other’s throats and the younger guests with whom they play a psychosexual game — only this time, the group is deliberately racially diverse, one couple is connected to the military-industrial complex, and the home is controlled by an experimental AI unit named Buddy (Augusto Bitter).

A co-production from Tarragon Theatre and Modern Times Stage Company in association with Theatre ARTaud, Silogix and Mahmud’s ambitious play, directed by Mike Payette and aided by a creative, surprise-filled set by Christine Ting-Huan 挺歡 Urquhart, provides a cascade of memorable images and lines in its quest to, as Virginia puts it, “get the guests.” But the framework may hamper the play’s creativity, because in its myriad additional themes and disconnected observations, this Woolf blows hard at the door without ever quite knocking the house down.

CRAZE wears its inspiration on its sleeve, similarly divided into three hellishly named (but shorter) “acts” and featuring many of the same beats and interactions of the Albee play, told in a slightly different context which puts the plays in conversation with each other. The changes range from small to large, moving from the world of academia to the advertising, medical and military fields, each of which offers its own kind of comforting illusion. Instead of “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf,” June and Rene sing “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”; instead of focusing on a critique of the American nuclear family, the play looks at our complicity in global misery.

There’s still an examination of the act of procreation, here focused on the inheritance of generational flaws through bloodlines; however, unlike the original’s contemplation of a future lack of diversity through eugenics, these characters are obsessed with knowing where each other is “from,” asking each other blunt questions to try to define “what kind of Brown” or “what kind of Asian” they are. Rene’s creations, first his drones adopted for military use and then his AI unit, are his attempt to leave a lasting legacy, a form of bloodless, remote children that turn on him with unintended consequences.

With gender roles updated for the modern audience, Louisa Zhu’s Selina is far less mousy than the original’s Honey, though with a similar secret appreciation for violence. Here, she’s a driven “assistant to the assistant art director” with her eyes on promotion and terrified of her family’s legacy of conquest, obsessed with Rene’s Rothko-like painting that she claims possesses the aura of a slave ship.

Similarly self-assured, Richie (Kwaku Okyere) is a heart surgeon, happy to wrestle with Rene linguistically, physically, and intimately in Anita Nittoly’s effective fight direction. That the script changes Rene from a history professor to an inventor of AI removes some of the tension between the two men, no longer presenting a metaphorical contest of history vs. science, but of two different types of technology.

Strangely, at only 80 minutes, CRAZE doesn’t feel that much shorter than its famously epic inspiration. That might be because, as its title suggests, what it cuts in dialogue it adds in concepts, which come thick and fast, flying by without completely settling. A switch in focus from the domestic to the global broadens the play, but also sits uncomfortably within the original’s constraints.

It’s telling that, over the course of the first act, the outside world keeps trying to encroach on our foursome’s comfort, such as it is; as it bursts through, the play starts to come into its own, particularly in the third act when it diverges entirely. But then, we face another issue; without the close framework of the original play, things become freewheeling and disjointed, without a clear sense of what the playwrights want to achieve. It’s also not completely clear where the play wants to sit in relation to the original, between parody, homage, or simple jumping-off point.

Silovix and Mahmud display some entertaining humour to start us off, where Buddy the AI issues various disclaimers about the play. The AI provides most of the show’s humour until it, too, becomes twisted by the events of the evening. The humour is also of a rather different tone from much of the rest of the play; it might have been interesting to embrace it more fully, or further emphasize the difference between tones.

Urquhart’s set, an upscale home with creative, complex lighting by Arun Srinivasan that becomes a labyrinth of moving parts, broadens our perspective of the evening and lets us follow characters in interesting ways, while adding to the eerie factor of a night that descends into a Dantean sort of hell for its occupants. A particularly arresting image where June and Rene peer, stricken, through the windows as horror unfolds outside is all the play’s own, and may stay seared into your memory for some time.

Marble floors have a tendency to amplify sound, and though it’s faux marble here, the cadre of talented actors start the play at full volume and rarely get any quieter. Volume aside, the assured actors keep things tight, from Ryder’s blowsy June to Kazmi’s withdrawn Rene, dripping with venom. Okyere has a winning, friendly charm as a confident young swinger, and Zhu talks about her interest in anti-essentialism, the rejection of immutable traits or identity that sits at uneasy odds with her fears about her own history, with a powerful intensity.

You don’t need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to appreciate CRAZE – in fact, the latter play will likely seem fresher if you don’t. Its multitude of topics and effective design are bound to start some conversations. But a clearer idea of purpose and scale would go a ways toward strengthening its foundation against the Woolf outside.

Photo of Ali Kazmi and Lisa Ryder by Roya DelSol

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