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The Information She Carried

nytheatre.com review by Rachel Macklin
August 15, 2005

Conspiracy theories make for exciting entertainment. With television shows like CSI topping the network ratings and Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code setting records on the bestseller lists, it seems fairly obvious that we love a daring mystery or scandalous cover-up.At the beginning of The Information She Carried, by David L. Williams, a young conspiracy theorist, Sharon North (Daina Michelle Griffith), tells us we’ve been lied to. Systematically and covertly, the American people have been kept in the dark for centuries. It is the year 2002, and North is on the hunt for the baseball that killed Ray Chapman on August 16, 1920, causing baseball’s single historical fatality. She believes that the ball holds a powerful secret connected to President George Washington himself. With this baseball, she can finally procure access to documents that reveal the truth of the 1986 Challenger disaster.In order to obtain the ball, however, North must steal it from Roxy Borman (Jocelyn Greene), whose father bought it and passed it down to her. So North shows up at Borman’s apartment, finding Roxy in conversation with her blind date, Billy Shepherd (Brian Poirier) and her roommate, Mark Engle (Darin Guerrasio). With the help of Adam Weishaupt (Frank Sallo), whose connection to the conspiracy will also be revealed, North takes the three hostage at gunpoint and they wait for the return of Borman’s roommate, Lois (Jeane Fournier), who has the keys that can open the safe where the baseball is kept. But North is antsy and agitated. She is haunted by a figure in black, Christa Chapman (Christine Carroll), who may or may not exist outside her own imagination.These are the threads of The Information She Carried, but instead of weaving them into a coherent and absorbing story, Williams has left us holding a tangled skein of yarn. The characters feel two-dimensional and their relationships are ambiguous. Williams drops words like “Illuminati” and “Freemason” into the mix to stir things up, but the significance of these infamous secret societies (both staples of Dan Brown’s fiction) is never really made clear. Ann Carroll’s direction is effective but uneven. Blocking and props lack necessary weight at important moments (the gun, for instance, is rarely treated as if it is loaded or dangerous).Kley Gilbuena’s set is cluttered, though intriguing at the outset. The stage is surrounded by blue sawhorses and crime scene tape. Clipboards marked as various “exhibits” hang from the sawhorses and two flats upstage sport images connected by blue tape. I was expecting these items to come into play within the story, but, aside from a few chairs and tables, they are barely used.The cast-members of Information do a credible job, and try their best to make sense of the script’s inconsistencies. Griffith in particular is energetic and earnest, and is at her best when describing her theories to the audience. Yet, despite the best efforts of its artists, The Information She Carried is missing the essential information that would pull us to the edge of our seats.