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nytheatre.com review by Julie Blumenthal
What is crime? Is there such a thing as right or wrong? How do you define criminal behavior? These are the questions writer/performer Perri Yaniv explores in his solo play Word Infirmia: The Criminal Perspectives Project.Based on interviews with prisoners, prison administrators, police, criminals, and victims, Yaniv uncovers here the highly personal nature of morality and right and wrong. Far from an absolute, definitions of criminal behavior are revealed to be innate only so far as they are bound up in social and cultural mores, personal history, self-awareness, and self-esteem.This may not come as a surprise to any who’ve explored the concept of morality as an acquired trait. But Yaniv’s documentary style and the range of personalities and histories he brings to the stage brings these theoretical ideas vividly to life. The material—simple responses to simple questions—is utterly illuminating and real. While it may not be surprising, it breathes flesh and blood into our ideas of truth and personal responsibility.True, I spent a few moments wishing to be surprised—but perhaps that’s just to wish that human nature were other than what it is. But for every dark moment—the white-collar felon excusing his embezzlement as “an advance,” the warden’s grim assessment of burglars-turned-murderers who blame their victims for leaving the window open or “getting in the way” during a theft—there is an equally luminous moment where a perpetrator (I’m now questioning my use of the word “criminal”) sees outside the prison of the self and recognizes the effects of his crime on his family, his victim, his victim’s family; where moral codes are revealed as a beautifully shifting mosaic reflecting necessity, honor, and survival.If this sounds powerful, it is. The material in Word Infirmia is irrefutable, and Yaniv, as a young performer, is to be commended for compiling it simply and with integrity. However, his inexperience shows in a tendency to comment on his material, which is compounded by a somewhat stylized, heavy-handed directorial touch by Glynis Rigsby.The challenge of documentary is letting the truth tell itself, creating only the structure needed to do so. Too often, in physical and vocal choices, I felt the eyes of the performer, the researcher, the director looking over the shoulder of the witness, when all that was needed was the truth. As such, the structure of Word Infirmia could be more carefully built, and the performance less so. While all the excerpts are telling, some seem misplaced, and the piece does not carry as strong an overall arc as it might. Though technically strong, Edmund Mooney’s sound design (collage of the recorded interviews, Johnny Cash pre-show music) is somewhat obvious and distracting.That said, Yaniv delineates the individual personas of his interviewees well, and with compassion held equally for the petite female cop and the drug-dealing high school dropout. Adrian Jones’s lighting gives shape and texture to the range of tones and personalities we meet.The voices Yaniv has collected are varied, real, and well worth hearing. As the piece matures, I hope he learns to let them sing.Copyright © 2013 The New York Theatre Experience, Inc. All rights reserved.
