REARRANGING THE DARK HOUSE
The work explores the arrival of a new baby in a faker-than-fake American nuclear family. It begins with a monologue delivered by Mother (Daryl Heller) expounding on her fear of surrendering her life in the interest of raising her child. “Good-bye thoughts longer than five minutes,” she laments. “Good-bye uninterrupted conversation.” Baby (Dan Prindle) comes on next, dressed in yellow Reeboks, yellow Dr. Dentons, and a black swallowtail coat; he has a huge white plaster head. Baby then learns to walk, slowly rising to his feet and stumbling toward Mother.
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From this opening moment, Rearranging the Dark House demonstrates a severe lack of rigor. Heller’s opening monologue is delivered with minimal commitment, and Baby’s exploits seem cheap and false because they’re so overdone. Neither actor displays any personal investment in what he or she does, but then such an investment may be too much to ask, given how embarrassingly thin the material is.
The piece shifts from the merely unpleasant to the downright insulting in the second act, which attempts to rectify the problems confronting the family. In separate scenes, Baby, Emily, and Mother confront the bear, resulting in a kind of liberation for each. Baby takes off his big white head (although this doesn’t seem to affect his character noticeably). Emily, who has heretofore danced in a highly constrained, balletic way, suddenly lets loose and starts incorporating some of the bear’s sensuality into her movements. Mother, who has been distressingly uptight throughout the show, wrestles with the bear and ends up being a lot more fun. What insults me here is not only the simplemindedness of this “solution” but the way in which it panders to sexist notions of women: all that Mother needs to become less frigid is a good roll with the bear.
