Keith Reddin looks like Chekhov on vacation. Chekhov on vacation, as played by Woody Allen. A 33-year-old sometime actor who’s better known for writing plays than for appearing in them, Reddin’s got the Chekhovian head of tousled brown hair and the delicate, boyish, interested face. No pince-nez or beard, though, and no fin de siecle aura of formality at all. Woody-thin and Woody-bookish, Reddin slouches, nearly folded up in his chair, wearing a slouchy sweater over slouchy pants.
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The difference between the two characters is that where Chekhov’s aristocrat attains a painful grandeur–the classic example of the beautiful loser–Reddin’s yup just moves from sick to grotesque. He’s so chillingly unconscious, so frighteningly superficial, it’s funny.
Whether Reddin would acknowledge the Chekhov/Allen parallel in his look and work, I can’t say for sure. I didn’t think to ask him about it when we met recently, outside a rehearsal room where David Petrarca was leading cast members through the American Blues Theater production of Reddin’s Peacekeeper. When he talks about influences, Reddin mentions John Guare, with whom he studied at the Yale drama school; Howard Brenton, who writes nasty sharp-left broadsides; and David Mamet: “I don’t know anybody alive who’s writing today who’s not influenced by Mamet.” Woody and Anton don’t come up.
Stressful, too. Not only are Swift and Fielding capable of ending the world, they’re also duty-bound to end it with a minimum of discussion–and certainly without any speculations as to the ethics and consequences of their actions. If one of them hesitates when the order’s given, the other’s expected to shoot him. Needless to say, this isn’t conducive to the free exchange of ideas.
“I was concentrating on the people in the silos, that part of the nuclear system. And I started getting to think about these two guys down there–because they’re on 24-hour shifts, you know; they’re 50 feet underground, and they’re not really supposed to talk about what they do. And I thought, ‘Well, what the hell do they talk about?’ So the first scene that I wrote was actually one of the scenes in the silo, where the two guys were talking, ’cause I was trying to figure out what they’d say. And from there I sort of moved further out, like, ‘Well, then if this is their job, what happens on their off time, when they go to a bar? And then, if they’re married, what would their home life be like?’
And yet, Peacekeeper’s not all sweet empathy. A gleeful, high-pitched, clearly Woodyish malice creeps into Reddin’s voice as he talks about a scene where Swift and Fielding sit silent for a disconcertingly long time: “I love making the audience uncomfortable like that. They really were squirming in their seats. It was great.”
