I can remember exactly where I was on Sept. 11th 2021. It’s etched in my brain as it is for almost everyone old enough to remember or has seen the repeats on TV.
In Anna Ziegler’s new play “The Janeiad”, premiering at the Old Globe through July 13th, Jane is a married woman with two children living in Brooklyn. She sends her husband Gabe off to work on this particular morning, and never sees him again. He never comes home, and nothing of his or him is ever recovered. Gabe worked in The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, when two planes flew into them and obliterated everything and everyone who worked there including 343 members of the New York Fire Dept. and New York Fire Patrol.
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| Nadine Malouf and Michaela Watkins |
That’s when Jane gets the phone call from Gabe who tells her that he is stuck in his building in the South Tower and sees smoke, but worse, looking out the window….and then the phone goes dead.
Ten years later, Jane (Michaela Watkins) is still in a daze; in limbo, living in the same Brownstone she and Gabe had occupied, keeping busy mostly by waiting for Gabe (Ryan Vasquez) to return home. She's living between waiting and sleeping. She sends her children off to school and she puts hr cluttered house in order. She has fallen asleep in her favorite blue chair (Tim Mackabee) while reading the Odyssey, her book club’s choice.
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| Michaela Watkins and Nadine Malouf |
Juxtaposed into this picture, Penelope (Nadine Malouf), wife of Odysseus appears and shares with Jane that she too had waited for her husband, who went off to war. She waited for twenty years when he finally showed up; no explanations. She encourages Jane to have patience, and ‘wait’. “I don’t want to wait.” “But you will, and it will need 20 years of patience and trust.”
Throughout the years of waiting, and wading through life, Jane gets an assortment of visitors and phone calls, from her rabbi, her sister, a family friend, her distant but bossy mother, her cleaning woman who comes once a week, her Yoga instructor and her inquisitive realtor, among others.
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| Nadine Malouf Michaela Watkins and Ryan Vasquez |
Director Maggie Burrows, who deftly directs “The Janeiad”, has her hands on the pulse of both Jane and Penelope as Penelope circles the Sheryl And Harvey White Theatre (in the round) seamlessly changing characters ( Including those mentioned above) with a different accent, or slight costume change. Malouf is simply outstanding as she toggles back and forth between being Jane’s best friend to her enabler to lending an understanding ear to be, as she claims, ‘her north star’. For twenty years, Jane has been living between two worlds.
One day, twenty years later, Jane has a visit from a young man wearing a mask claiming to be from Greenpeace. Could it be? Once again Jane is thrown into a conundrum. On the one hand she knows that Gabe is dead, on the other hand , this young man finally claims to be Gabe. He looks like Gabe once the mask is removed; he remembers some things about his family; he looks at photos and pictures and asks questions; just enough to question his reality.
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| Michaela Watkins, Ryan Vasquez and Nadine Malouf (in background) |
Does he come back to bring closure? Is he real or is it an apparition of him that she sees? As an audience member, I was almost convinced that he was real. Or maybe I wanted to believe he was real? In some ways a myth or another’s story of survival can help us move on.
Time moves forward. Dates are announced through NPR news bulletins on a portable radio: September 11 until, September 12., until it’s September 11th again. (Melanie Chen Cole) as Jane relives the moment. Once in a while children’s voices can be heard from off stage but are never seen.
All three actors are nothing less than excellent. If an actor can convince this reviewer to almost believe that this ‘dead’ character is alive after all, I say more power to them and not just in the mythological sense, but in their own reality.
David Reynoso designed the costumes, although they were all contemporary and like time, never changed. The only thing that does change especially for Malouf is the sound of her voice; the intonations.
La Chi Chu designed the lighting oft time throwing us in the dark depicting a quick scene change or character change.
Grief can come in many colors. After the sudden death of my husband I saw sightings of him wherever I went. Once I thought I saw him on our living room sofa. Once I dreamed that he called me on the phone to give me a phone number of where he could be reached. He told me not to worry, that he would be OK. I asked my “Dream Guru” to interpret my dream and she told me that the phone number had a New York prefix, and that he was OK and not to worry. After that, the dreams and sightings began to fade and I realized, finally, that I would never see him again and had to move forward with my life.
And so it was with Jane. After a series of conversations with Gabe, the realization that he was dead finally occurred to her and she knew she had to get on with her life and stop living in two worlds or maybe not. She exits the room ready for what’s next: “and then” she exclaims.
How does one leave the theatre without thinking about a play like this? Ms. Ziegler and I had a brief chat outside the theatre, after the show and I couldn’t help but tell her how much I admired her thinking and how she made me think about the power of compassion, grief (mostly my own) and the healing process. It was haunting! It was healing! It was excellent!
Enjoy.
See you at the theatre.
When: Runs through July 13. 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays
Where: Old Globe Theatre’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, Balboa Park
Photo: Rich Soublet II.
Tickets: $38 and up
Phone: 619-234-5623
Online: theoldglobe.org
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