JONAH

REVIEW BY CELIA IPIOTIS

In Rachel Bond’s new play Jonah at the Laura Pels Theater, a marvelous, young cast of four instantaneously establish their characters. When we meet Ana (an impressive Gabby Beans) she’s facing Jonah, (Hagan Oliveras). They walk forward and back; towards and away from each other like people on a ledge searching for the balance between each other.

What we come to question is if Jonah is real or not and if our narrator is reliable. This young white man wears his vulnerability, his desire to be heard, to be seen, to be loved all over his skin–just like Ana. Ostensibly meeting in her room at boarding school, their relationship is one of physical awkwardness, sweetness and compassion. They share an understanding of how it feels to be an outsider, trying to live up to outsized expectations while questioning their own capabilities.

With a flash of light, another young man Danny (Samuel H. Levine) steals into her bedroom. Only now Ana is in her home and her passive aggressive  step-brother emerges. At one time, he was her protector, but now he wants more, and asks for more inside her dorm room. It’s so complicated, it’s so heartbreaking, yet so real. 

How many children embroider complicated relationships in dysfunctional, brutal families? Writers can  dredge piercing, outsized stories of strife and hope and turn them into fodder for their art. Yet, it’s the dreams that feed Ana, even if she’s continuously trying to push the nightmares away.

After her brother, Ana is back in another bedroom, only this time it’s a writer’s retreat? She is visited by a concerned male student Steven (John Zdrojeski) who notices she’s not eating or properly taking care of herself. Again, like a phantom, the lanky Steven materializes in the room. Nonthreatening but equally anxious, the bug bitten fellow is an appreciator of Ana and nature.

Tautly directed by Danya Taymor, the Roundabout Theater’s production of Rachel Bond’s Jonah is a refreshing piece of theater. 

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis