TONE CLUSTERS and
Civitas Theatre calls its program of one-acts “Plays That Dan Quayle Would Hate.” Of course this heading is taxonomically incorrect–real and fictional characters don’t inhabit the same spheres. And the people in these two dramas are far too real to be associated with the likes of Mr. Quayle.
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When Joyce Carol Oates’s Tone Clusters opens, a crime has been committed and a suspect taken into custody. Frank and Emily Gulick sit before a television camera while images are projected onto video screens scattered over the stage echoing the topics being discussed. A man who could be a talk-show host, a police detective, or the voice of their conscience solicits their opinions on a variety of knotty ethical problems. Is violent crime the result of social malaise? Can guilt reside in those without conscience? Is there really such a thing as an unpremeditated murder? Can psychotic aggression be foreseen? Does a “good” family guarantee a “good” child? The questions grow ever more abstract and enigmatic: “Is the intrusion of the ‘extraordinary’ into the dimension of the ‘ordinary’ an indication that such Aristotelian categories are invalid? If one day fails to resemble the preceding one, what does it then resemble?” Meanwhile Mr. and Mrs. Gulick struggle to retain their middle-class notions of the universe and their place in it in the face of overwhelming evidence that their son, Carl, has brutally raped, mutilated, and murdered the teenage girl next door.
This technique is most often used to comic effect, since a speaker’s actions are so often at variance with his or her perceptions. But director Peter C. Hobert has his actors (Ted Rubenstein, Wendy Rae, and Mindy Hester) do exactly as they themselves say–making their characters’ insular self-conscious narratives not simply a comedy gimmick or a classroom exercise but a startlingly accurate rendering of the manner in which people cope with trauma by “pulling back,” viewing themselves as if from a distance.
