FringeNYC 2013: Playing God

Review by Amy Lee Pearsall · August 9, 2013

What happens when three writers sit down to write a book together? In The Covey Theatre Company’s production of Garrett Heater's Playing God, currently showing at CSV Flamboyan as part of the New York International Fringe Festival, we get egos, arrogance, and occasionally crackling dialogue, but little of the passionate interplay that one might hope to see in a work about creative exchange.

The basic premise: Ken Prescott (Louis Balestra), a novelist slipping into financial ruin, and Ann Jackson (Karis Wiggins), a writer of thrillers who hasn't produced in three years, have been recruited by their puppet master of an agent to craft a single story together with wunderkind Paul Caine (Darin Sundberg). Personalities and power struggles ensue, but half an hour into the piece, I was still trying to figure out exactly what the play was about.

To be fair, Heater – as both playwright and director – has saddled himself with a dramatic challenge. For all the romance of creative tête-à-tête, you will find no group writing sessions here, or debates in cafes. Indeed, his characters spend almost the entirety of the two-hour piece on the telephone across the stage from one another. Interestingly, the omnipotent agent is also often on the phone, but those conversations are all one-sided from our perspective.

Perhaps due to this convention, there seems to be a general lack of immediacy and connection between the characters from a writing perspective, and between the actors from a directing perspective. There are flashes of intimacy: Ann and Paul experience a moment of mentorship after several heated exchanges steeped in professional competition. But with all the witty banter, backbiting, and verbal jabs, the characters rarely seem interested in anything beyond themselves, and communion remains elusive.

Most of the physical interaction that happens in the piece is between Woman (Julia Berger) and Man (Jordan Glaski). As the two characters of the authors' work in progress, Berger and Glaski bring the-story-within-a-story to life and interact with their creators, providing action and humor to the proceedings.

Prop and scenic designer Susan Blumer effectively creates home offices for each of the writers, with careful choices of desks, laptops, and set dressing for each. It was not immediately clear to me whether or not there was a costume designer for the production; if the actors were pulling from their own closets, they did a great job.

Lighting designer Vivi Valdez gets the job done, bathing each writer in light whenever a phone – or bluetooth – is engaged. There was an awkward moment at intermission on the evening I saw it; it was not evident from either the light or sound cue that the break had begun. As I saw the production on opening night, hopefully this issue has been rectified.

The mystery of the creative process has long captivated its fans, and I will be the first to admit that flawed characters make for fascinating theatre. That said, a writer more interested in hearing himself talk than in communicating something is a terrible thing to waste, and this play has three of them. When Playing God, perhaps we think of fear, power, and might, but when mastering the art of devotion, the importance of being worthy of love cannot be overstated. At a certain point, the audience just wants someone to root for.