“I don’t want to push anymore; I just want to look in the mirror and see myself,” Ella, a disturbed and torn heroin addict, pleads to both the audience and James, a conflicted war veteran who idolizes her. Her cry distills the message of the Doorway Arts Ensemble play, Anima, to a plea for freedom from the unfulfilling, manipulative and barren confines of her life.
The low-budget and virtually unknown Anima, which runs at Flashpoint in Washington through May 11, is leaving the few who see it slumped over in their chairs for minutes after curtain call in a state of utter confusion and complete mortification from what they just saw.
Ella and Vlad, played by Marissa Molnar and Parker Dixon, are an explosive pair dominated by whacked notions of life topped with addictions to almost every drug imaginable. They are on-and-off lovers with a hot-blooded relationship way past any limits of stability. In the first 10 minutes of the play, Ella is thrown across the stage, both actors cut themselves in an eerie act of romanticism and the pitch of their voices reaches a level only dogs can hear.
After the play has slapped you in the face a couple of times, in walks Ella’s old high school friend and haunted Iraq War veteran James, played by university alumnus Andres Talero – completing the play’s small but efficient cast. Consumed with thoughts of jealousy and paranoia about James’s obvious desire for Ella, Vlad goes haywire as James crashes at the Brooklyn apartment in hopes of finding a job in New York City.
The performance is haunted by stories of rape – along with the act itself – and disturbing memories of war. The actors interweave their memories of these motifs with quick, theoretical dialogue that playwright Christiaan Greer hopes will raise questions about fate, abuse and reality of the viewer.
With both Vlad and James living in the apartment, Ella, who listlessly flurries around the stage in a state of piercing anxiety and manic behavior, is forced to choose between the poetical but broken love Vlad offers her or a new, less broken life with the player who adores her, James.
But after a whirlwind of fistfights, more cutting, multiple overdoses and a quick, heated sex scene, only one performer is left standing, and even that is questionable.
Greer, in his note to the audience, writes that Anima is an extreme version of many people’s reality and that it can “help us to reexamine our connections with others” and “ask the sometimes unaskable.” Although Greer is correct in saying his play leaves the viewer questioning fundamental societal notions, the extremely self-destructive, obsessive characters are, oddly, almost approachable, if not relatable. Because the dialogue is often quick and quippy, some of his message zooms over the audience’s head. It’s too quick and momentous to be realistic. Instead, it becomes tiresome and superfluous at times.
The utter craziness of the writing, also, makes it a difficult play to act in.
Monlar is at times over-exaggerated in her movements and speech, playing the confusing Ella in a way that seems excessively calculated and inconsistent with how Greer wrote the character. But Monlar is able to capture the audience with her fiery wit and animation, especially during the more frenzied scenes.
Talero, in his portrayal of the awkward and somewhat dry James, is more convincing as the play matures and he gains confidence. He is at his best when he is throwing Vlad around the stage or yelling in a fit of rage.
The capricious, volatile and erratic Vlad is probably the most disgusting character on stage and the hardest to portray. Even so, Dixon is the most believable of all the actors and is able to deliver even the wordiest treatises with a precision and conviction that hinges the viewer on Vlad’s actions and decisions, making the absurdity of his character all the more shocking with each new development.
Despite its imperfections, Anima is an enthralling entanglement of human souls that is going shamefully unnoticed. For an upstart company’s first performance, Anima is remarkably good, a real tour de force, the kind of play that you never forget.
Anima runs at the Mead Theatre Lab Program at Flashpoint in Washington until May 11. Tickets cost $15.
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