Apr
4th
Fugue - By Lee Thuna (New York - Cherry Lane Theatre)
By Luke Tudball
"It is a terrible thing for a person to lose their memories for it is they that shape us and make us who we are".
What must it be like to wake one day with a completely
blank slate for a mind? A “clean page”? No recollection of
anything that has gone before? No knowledge of friends, family,
home, likes, dislikes, or even your own name. What is it like to
be “unscathed by life and learning”? For some, perhaps, exciting,
exhilarating. For others, terrifying and destructive. But for
all, transforming.
It is impossible to know just how great of a transformation
may take place – how little or how much a person may ‘change’.
But what is it to change if you don’t know what you were before?
And how do you know if what people – your ‘friends’, your
‘relatives’ – are saying is ‘true’ or not just what they hope to
be true, or worse, want to be true.
‘Fugue’, a new play
by Lee Thuna at the Cherry Lane Theatre, directed by two-time
Tony Award Winner Judith Ivey, follows the treatment of one Fugue
patient, Mary, played by Deirdre O’Connell, who is found
wandering in Chicago, her feet blistered and bloody. She has been
travelling continuously on the L-Train, but she does not know
why. Doctors at the hospital immediately recognize this as a
symptom of the "fugue" state of amnesia, where the patient is
literally running away from an intolerable memory and a young
psychiatrist (Rick Stear) is assigned to work with her. But he
too is running from his own demons after a mistake he made with a
patient which had a devastating effect on his own life. His job
is to make her remember, but if she does, will he be repeating
the mistake that he made? Sometimes the hardest memories to run
away from are the ones that you can't even remember.
Winner of the American Theatre Critics Award for Best Play
in Regional Theatre, ‘Fugue’ is a masterpiece,
and the cast fantastically placed. O’Connell is remarkably moving
in her sometimes painfully honest portrayal of Mary, and Stear
fantastic as the wounded Dr. Lucchesi trying to understand her.
Ari Butler and Lily Corvo are also excellent, both making their
Off-Broadway debuts. But there are no weak links, unless you
count the mind as a character and Thuna’s piece is both poignant
and uplifting in equal measures.
This piece is as charming as it is terrifying, as honest as
it as dark, intriguing as it is engaging. Where it finds holes it
tries to fill them, where it finds loss, it tries to bring
healing. If it is a terrible thing to lose your memories, then it
follows that it must be an amazing thing to find them again. And
it is.
‘Fugue’ runs a limited
engagement until April 22. Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday – Friday at
8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, Sunday at 3pm. Tickets $45,
$50
Cast: Charlotte Booker, Ari
Butler, Lily Corvo, Liam Craig, Deirdre O'Connell, Danielle
Skraastad, Rick Stear and Catherine Wolf.
Scenic design by Neil Patel
Costumes by Gail Cooper Hecht
Lighting by Pat Dignan
Sound by T. Richard Fitzgerald and Carl Casella.
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