THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Taylor Mac
Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London N4 3JP, until March 16, 2024
A clown bedecked in a pink pig-tailed wig, slapdash greasepaint and oversized, garishly puce jumpsuit, sits with an unsettlingly creepy patience, staring contemplatively into the distance of the intimately sized crowd in the Park 200, where Taylor Mac’s fast-paced story of domestic conflict, set in the middle of nowhere, America, plays out for the subsequent two hours.
The symbolic importance of the sight of the somewhat sinister pied jester in these opening moments cannot be overstated, as Mac’s narrative gives us a riveting insight into the identity dysphoria taking place all over the country right now, with cultural wars only getting more intense by the day.
And if this is Felicity Huffman’s way (as seems to be the way of so many American actors to gee up their public persona and acting chops by trying a run on a London stage) of recouping her reputation after the scandal of illegally procuring her daughter an ill-gotten place in university, it is a unique and compelling one.
Huffman plays Paige, a long suffering suburban mom who refuses to suffer any longer under the reign of her oppressive husband Arnie, played with subtle artistry by Simon Startin. The premise is a homecoming, that of Paige’s eldest child Isaac, from the marines, having worked for a year on tours of duty in mortuary services, gathering the remains of fallen soldiers from the field of battle. Dishonorably discharged for substance abuse, Isaac, long used to the ordered life of a soldier and seeking solace of the kind only home can bring, will return to find utter blissful chaos, Paige having embraced a discomforting level of devil-may-care domestic pandemonium. Clothes are strewn everywhere and there’s neither rhyme nor reason to the refrigerator being used as a cupboard, and kitchen cupboards being used to hold god knows what. Paige is using various meds and chemicals including a hefty dose of estrogen to keep a post-stroke suffering Arnie in a state of near vegetative docility, and has dressed him as the aforementioned clown for Isaac’s return.
Add to all this the central and much deferred twist of Isaac’s sibling Max having recently come out as transgender, and you have a perfect parable for the state of American society; more resonant even now than when it was first performed nine years ago.
Huffman is excellent as Paige, embodying that deliciously deep conflict of a woman who is desperately seizing upon a hitherto undiscovered strength in a newly found sense of self whilst also wrapped up in a wicked sadism and incisively delivering some of the wittiest lines of this dark tragicomedy (‘I blame the Cheetos. How could we feed our children fluorescent food and not expect a little gender confluence?’). The grudgingly endearing aspect to Huffman’s performance though lies in the fact that she is, in a part that at points threatens to dominate the scene, able to step back and showcase the next generation of talent.
As good as her performance is, the star turns are Max and Isaac, played by Thalia Dudek and Steffan Cennydd respectively. The interplay between these two creates moments of frisson and magic, Dudek’s physical command of the stage drawing us into Max’s coming-of-age and emerging out of the dark shadow of their family and the past, and Cennydd evoking a deep sense of pathos in his nuanced presentation of PTSD-induced human frailty and, as Paige rightly puts it several times, his character’s ‘brooding masculinity’.
Real credit has to be given to Ceci Calf’s set design, responsible for one of the most innovative pieces of set usage in theater I have seen in years taking place at the end of the first half to symbolize the ever cracking structure of the American family.
Hir, particularly brilliantly because it is being performed in the moderately intimate Park Theatre in Finsbury Park, places us in the story of America and the western world, a search for identity and domestic displacement, and uncomfortable truths: in such a small space there is, literally and existentially, no room to hide.
