KNUCKLE
The searcher is Sarah’s brother, Curly, who after a voluntary exile returns to England to investigate her disappearance. In the 12 years since he left the land he loathes, Curly has become a prosperous international arms dealer. On the cynical assumption that someone has to do it, he’ll sell ammo to anyone. “I go where there’s a war,” he declares, pronouncing death “the axle grease that makes civilization work.” (Curly resembles Andrew Undershaft, the munitions manufacturer in Major Barbara, but without Shaw’s devil’s advocacy.)
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It’s at this point that Hare suddenly thickens his plot–with quicksand. just as in the film Chinatown, the main character and audience feel the ground shift beneath their feet. In one stroke Curly uncovers a host of ugly revelations–blackmail, a predatory real-estate scam, even the murder of an attack dog–and of course they also explain Sarah’s disappearance. All shed light on his father’s cryptic credo: “Life is a racket. . . . The horror of the world today is that there are no excuses left”–evildoers can’t persuade themselves they’re anything else. Removed from this contagion, Sarah and her surrogate Jenny seem, if only by a process of elimination, the play’s one hope.
Simonson finds both the right sound for the play (impeccable accents and Larry Hart’s aural design, which eerily suggests the play’s polarities by contrasting verismo arias with gunshots and saxophone riffs) and the right look (Robert G. Smith’s menacing iron-mesh set, which resembles a chain-link fence, stuffed with sodden autumn leaves). The result is the perfect physical equivalent for the trap Hare springs with a vengeance.
