Pieces
cast list
Louise Collins, Jennifer Kidd, Steven Meo
directed by
Kate Wasserberg
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Pieces, now playing at the 59E59 Theaters, is a Welsh import for the Brits Off Broadway Festival and, as such, is a interesting portal into current British theatre. Pieces retains the traditional British fetish of parental sins being paid for by their offspring, along with the (much more pleasant) British trait of a healthy sense of black humor, and layers these onto a modern fable.
Pieces concerns twins Beatrice and Jack, whose parents die in a car crash. Godmother Sophie, absent from their lives for a long while, returns to take care of the twins. The cause of Sophie’s absence is obvious to the audience – Sophie and the deceased father were lovers at some point, but it is a nagging question for the children.
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The children are played with a gleeful combination of innocence, explosive anger and precociousness by Louise Collins and Steven Meo. These two play up the creepy twin stereotype perfectly – breaking from normal child reactions into co-dependent caretakers roles with lightning speed. Their ages are purposefully indistinct. They might be younger and very well read, or older and emotionally stunted, due to their isolated upbringing. In either case, Jack and Beatrice show flashes of adult emotions intermixed with childish incomprehension. Jennifer Kidd, as Sophie, is uncomfortable with children in general and these twins in particular. Louise Collins does a wonderful job as Beatrice, balancing a young girl’s desire to be supporting with a child’s need for an emotional touchstone.
Sophie’s tentative interaction with Jack and Beatrice does ring a bit hollow. Any woman this uncomfortable in the situation should never be allowed alone with children, much less be the guardian of them. But, since Pieces plays as an adult tale with a moral, it is an excusable lapse. Miss Kidd does an excellent job portraying the clumsy interaction of adults when they are injected into a difficult situation with children.
As Jack and Beatrice try to make sense of their new lives, they read up on death and mourning, then try to adapt their lives to the new reality. Being children means they have only a limited frame of reference in which to incorporate this research, written for adults. Therefore, they make some simple assumptions that are totally wrong – listening to Beatrice explain “fasting” or Jack explain “mourning” is hilarious, in a very dark way. As Jack and Beatrice pile misstep on misstep, Sophie’s tenuous control of the situation slips further and further from her grasp.
It is unclear if the moral of the play is don’t sleep with the parents of your godchild or don’t become a godparent to begin with, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. For anyone with a healthy fear of progenies, the real moral seems to be “don’t be alone with more than one child at a time.”
Kate Wasserberg does an interesting job directing, effectively conveying the basic inscrutability of emotional connection of twins, while playing up the gothic dread in the piece. She is confident enough to allow the humor in Pieces come through.
Playwright Hywel John has chosen an odd subject for this play, but commits to it fully. He is lucky to have a cast and director who follow through on the vision.
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New York reviews
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Three Sisters, Classic Stage Company
The Piano Lesson, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Momentum, Laurie Beechman Theatre
The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, La MaMa E.T.C.
John Gabriel Borkman, BAM Harvey Theater
Blood From a Stone, Acorn Theatre
Malfi, Inc., Theatre 54
Pieces, 59E59 Theaters
A Delicate Balance, Yale Repertory Theatre
The Memorandum, Beckett Theatre
The Scottsboro Boys, Lyceum Theatre
Driving Miss Daisy, Golden Theatre
Futura, TBG Theatre
La Bete, The Music Box Theatre
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
A Life in the Theatre, Schoenfeld Theatre
In Transit, 59E59 Theaters
theatre
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