Caitlin Zambino and Janet Greaves (all photos by OddDog Pictures)
The Echo Theater Company is currently presenting the California premiere of Lucas Hnath’s The Thin Place. The title refers to the fragile boundary between our world and the next. As a child, Hilda (Caitlin Zambito) was schooled by her grandmother to listen with her inner senses, to determine a word she was thinking. She was hoping to attune Hilda so they could communicate when she passed on. Hilda does not feel successful and seeks out British psychic Linda (Janet Greaves) to help her communicate with her grandmother. It seems Linda is successful and the two are soon close friends. Hilda is a bit shaken when Linda admits most of what she does is just a trick. Hilda is further disillusioned and belittled by Linda’s rich, snooty benefactor Sylvia (Corbett Tuck). Linda’s American cousin Jerry (Justin Huen) joins the women in an evening of heavy drinking, revealing that Linda is acting as a consultant to shore up the image of a shady politician. Ghost stories also play a part in the evening. It’s a strange little play that really has no payoff, leaving the audience to determine what it was all about.
Playwright Hnath, whose earlier plays Red Speedo, The Christians and A Doll’s House, Part 2 I admire, has let me down with this work. He has written speeches, not dialogue. He has written opinions, not characters. The play is not “spine-tingling” as it is billed. There is not much that the actors can do except go through their paces and deliver his words under Abigail Dreser’s direction. The play is not helped by the tennis-seating scenic design which sets the action in the middle of the space, with audiences staring at each other across the long playing space. They have to turn their heads from side to side as upstage actors serve dialogue to the downstage actors and vice versa. Even though the play is an intermission-less 90 minutes, it feels at least an hour too long. The thinnest space would seem to be Hnath’s script.
www.echotheatercompany.com