February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
A case in point is a fascinating, meritorious event titled ?The 29 Questions Project,? composed of the title play, written by Hillary Rollins, bracketed by three brief plays by Katie Bull.
The unexpected location is the backroom of something called Yaffa?s T Room, at the perhaps equally unfamiliar corner of Greenwich Street and Harrison Street, in Tribeca.
The event takes place at 7 p.m. on Mondays through October 4, with dinner optional at 6 p.m., an hour before the modest, effective show starts.
That location, a few blocks north of what has become known as Ground Zero is both apt and significant, since the 70-minute performance has as its organizing principle the horrifying events of Sept. 11, 2001, or, to be more accurate, reactions to the event, direct and otherwise, on the part of a group of ordinary New Yorkers.
The link to 9/11 is valid, since the world-shaking events of that day are touched upon, tangentially at least in all four plays, and, moreso, because playwright Bull, who also co-directed her own work, maintains that her trio of 10- and 15-minute playlets are rooted in things that actually happened to her more or less immediately following that date.
The central play, titled on its own simply ?29 Questions,? has a running time of 25 minutes, and has been directed by Leslie Kincaid Burby, while the director of the startling 10-minute fragment which opens the evening, ?Message From the Driver,? is Kathryn Alexander.
In Bull?s two-hander, which she says came directly from an incident she experienced with a cab driver on a journey from midtown to Washington Heights not long after 9/11, Heather Oakley is the harried urban passenger, and David Dartly is the driver, a youngish man of unspecified Middle Eastern origins.
Anthony Alvarez is present as a doorman, unnecessarily framing the play?s minimal action, a role completely superfluous to the heart of the play.
Oakley, who bears a startling resemblance to Nicole Kidman, becomes more and more alarmed as the driver?s comments grow increasingly ominous. Finally, when she requests a receipt for the fare, he takes an action which may be totally innocent, or, on the other hand, may confirm his passenger?s darkest suspicions.
In the longest playlet, ?29 Questions,? two young women play a question-and-answer game of the sort which is apparently gaining favor on Internet chat rooms. In the game, one participant asks a series of questions, mainly, but not entirely, innocuous queries, and the other player supplies spontaneous, off-the-cuff responses which, if the game is played openly and honestly, are meant to provide a sort of personality profile of the respondent, and perhaps of the questioner as well.
In the production at Yaffa?s, Allison Wright, identified as ?writer,? controls the exchange, while Patricia Hart supplies, for the part, the answers. Both actresses are fine but Wright, perhaps because of her dominant position in the exchange, has a slight edge.
Anxiety over the events of 9/11 is reflected in the nature of the questions asked and the tone of the answers given. Connection with 9/11 is, in this case, more shadowy that substantial. The time is ?October 2001? and the place is simply ?New York City.? The proximity to 9/11 intensifies the play?s considerable impact.
In the two brief sketches which close the bill, each clocking in at a mere ten minutes, the linkage is more easily perceived.
In the first closer, ?Arm,? a ?young college activist,? played with energy and clarity by Lillian Medville, delivers an anti-war screed at a time specified as ?January 2001? and a place identified as ?Wash., D.C.?
Immediately following, and so loosely connected that it feels at first like an entirely different playlet, the excellent Michael Robinson, as a ?young American G.I.? in ?March 2003? at a place pegged as ?Kuwait border, Iraq,? speaks of his personal experiences.
Perhaps because of the quality of earnest, fresh-faced innocence that the young actor manifests so clearly, Robinson?s contribution to ?The 29 Questions Project,? despite lasting only four or five minutes, makes the deepest and most lasting impression of the evening.
In the final fragment, Ashley Lambert is an ?American college tourist,? while Matt Sadewitz plays a ?young Palestinian student? who offers to guide the visitor through the potential hazards of ?Jerusalem, Old City, Moslem Quarter, Israel? in ?August 1984.?
While the programme?s other plays are presented from a Makeshift stage at one end of the T Room, the last play, ?Hand,? wanders through and around the room, and loses impact in its travels, at the student shows the traveler the city.
Both Lambert and Sadewitz are fresh and appealing, which is perhaps a key to the success of the overall endeavor. Virtually all of the participants are young, earnest and hard-working. It would be difficult indeed to fault any of them, so energetically and so open-heartedly do they address themselves to the tasks at hand.
?The 29 Questions Project? is simple, uncomplicated stuff, but, considering the climate of apprehension and fear in which we are immersed, it resonates.