Bruce Norris could have given the theatre a little more weight. He could have written a play on a recovery home for MAGA Republicans who reject the election. Instead, he instead wrote a play on sex offenders. Norris’s play “Downstate” opened Tuesday at Off Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons after productions at Chicago’s Steppenwolf and London’s National Theatre.
“Downstate”It takes place in a church-run home for sex offenders. The house is constantly being vandalized. The neighbors who were often violently concerned have joined forces to increase the safety zone around the school. This will restrict the mobility and grocery-shopping habits of the four men convicted for sex crimes against minors. Ivy (SusannaGuzman), a caseworker who is not sympathetic to her charges, has sent a warning about the new law. These men represent only a small fraction of the criminals she sees and monitors on a daily basis. Ivy doesn’t waste any time and hits back at men complaining about their severely restricted lives. It’s one woman against four men, but Ivy has the law on her side and she wears it like an AR-45 bulletproof body armor.
Norris also uses Ivy’s status in the legal system to toy with our sympathies. With the precision of a metronome, this playwright’s exposition drops one fact after another regarding just how little freedom these men retain after serving considerable prison sentences. No cellphones, no internet access, no credit cards, no female visitors, no alcohol — the list is itemized, each restriction methodically spaced and delivered throughout the two hours and 30 minutes of this two-act play. Somewhere in the second act, the police monitor wrapped around their ankles becomes the least of these men’s problems.
Act 1 reaches its climax early when Ivy meets with one of the sex offenders. Felix (Eddie Torres) wants to cross state lines to visit his dying sister, but he seriously jeopardizes that needed permission by visiting the local library to go online to look at his teenage daughter’s Facebook page on her birthday. Torres takes the soap opera of Felix’s life and turns it into real tragedy. In the light of his very dramatic performance, there’s seemingly nothing good about Guzman’s portrayal of a bad cop.
Norris not only knows how to construct a play, he also knows how to write a devastating one-liner, and the one he gives Ivy to eviscerate Felix’s life story is a nuclear. It’s nice to report that Ivy’s response to Felix — something about her husband’s love for his golden retriever – will not be the last time in “Downtown”A fiery reply can scorch the uneven playing fields. Norris, however, is an equal-opportunity writer. Sex offenders receive more verbal bombs than they deserve.
Ivy’s visit to the house — Norris quickly teaches us not to call it a “home” — is far less fraught than visits from Andy (Tim Hopper) and Em (Sally Murphy), the married couple who show up to confront the old wheelchair-bound Fred (Francis Guinan). Andy was sexually abused as a child by Fred, his piano teacher. His wife seems to have suffered the same traumatizing episodes that Fred did.
Contrary to what one would think, this is actually quite the opposite. “talk”Andy, Em, and Fred remain uncommonly civilized for a few reasons. Fred is open to Em and Andy’s suggestions. While the wheelchair as a sympathy prop helps, Guinan doesn’t need it. This actor quickly emerges as everyone’s favorite teacher/uncle/priest, a role Guinan works like a big ball of wax to dull the thornier aspects of his character’s past behavior. Norris also lightens the moment with extraordinary humor, most of it delivered through cellphone interruptions and numerous bathroom breaks from Fred’s housemates.
That’s the first confrontation. In Andy’s second and far more brutal talk with his erstwhile assailant, a third inmate, the flamboyant Dee (K. Todd Freeman) emerges as Fred’s vocal defender. This is a rare moment in theater where the writing and performances come together. The drama unfolds in a way that is both personal and so deeply painful that it can make you feel guilty for eavesdropping. By far the smartest guy in the house, Dee can twist logic to make sense of his every desire, and with the precision of an expert armsman, he comes way too close to exposing what may be Andy’s real motive for his visits to this particular house. Norris never stops messing with an audience’s expectations.
Glenn Davis, an actor completes the group of doomed sex offenders. Playing Gio, a gung-ho entrepreneur who earned himself a degree in business while in prison, Davis brims with optimistic bravado in a place (and a play) that’s in sore need of it. Although he is the one most likely to escape this neighborhood prison, Norris has a cunning way of turning every character’s asset into a liability, and vice versa.
The most interesting aspects of “Downstate” — the humorous interruptions that plague Andy’s initial confrontation with Fred or the complaints of foul odors that run throughout Act 2 — are rendered less obvious through Pam Mackinnon’s direction. Mackinnon is an example of self-effacing direction. She removes all trace of her work, save for the final product: great performances in an equally outstanding play.
