‘Six Characters’ brings life to a ponderous play at The-Hypocrites

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“Six Characters in Search of an Author” is being staged by The-Hypocrites at Chopin Theatre.

Updated: February 14, 2012 5:54PM

The Hypocrites have long demonstrated an amazing talent for putting a whole new spin on what some might consider dusty theatrical classics — everything from the tragedies of Sophocles, to Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” to a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

Now they have worked their latest miracle with “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 experiment in the absurd that, long before we were thinking about the virtual, dealt with notions of reality and unreality, actual existence vs. theatrical existence, and the whole notion of role ­playing and imagination.

Using Steve Mould’s highly distilled, 85-minute adaptation, and form-fitting a wonderfully self-mocking framing device — which feels completely improvised, but in fact is sharply calculated and full of “inside theater” humor — Halena Kays, the company’s gifted new artistic director (and immediate successor to its inspired founder, Sean Graney), has brought intensely vivid, frequently chilling life to a play that can sometimes seem ponderous. Not only is her casting superb. But she has made audacious use of the cavernous, yet intimate basement space of the Chopin Theatre that The Hypocrites continually turn into such a fascinating laboratory, and captured the full mystery of Pirandello’s mind-bending drama.

The play’s initial sequence captures all the goofy elements involved in a brush-up rehearsal for a show staged by The Hypocrites themselves, with a something less than disciplined gathering of an agitated Stage Manager (Ryan Walters is perfect); a vaguely inept young Director (a nicely lost-in-space Brennan Buhl); a harried, mildly neurotic Actress (the wholly believable Laura McKenzie), and a late-arriving Actor (a comically distracted John Taflan).

But as they begin work something remarkable happens. A group of “characters,” dressed in black mourning clothes (by way of costume designer Alison Heryer), and looking rather Aryan with their ghostly pallor and yellow-blonde hair (Pirandello was a big supporter of Mussolini), arrive at the theater and demand to have their story brought to life. Discarded by the playwright who first imagined them, they are a searingly dysfunctional family starved for recognition and realization. And they come with a tawdry tale — a script inside their heads. The “real actors” reluctantly agree to try their hand at acting out the characters’ destinies, and there is immense frustration on both sides.

To be sure, this family of six is a tormented assemblage: Father (a scorching turn by Larry Garner as the cruel, aging man who has indulged in a last-gasp sexual outing); Mother (Samantha Gleisten, a mostly silent sufferer, mourning for her dead lover and estranged son); that Son (an aptly sullen Ted Evans); the Stepdaughter, a victim of incest (played by Stevi Baston with an ideally prim yet ferociously chilly sexuality); and her two young siblings, the Boy (Michael Milito) and Girl (Ada Gray), both of whom have extraordinary faces and display uncanny discipline and eerie stillness throughout.

The six cast a powerful spell from the moment of their appearance, contrasting starkly with the playfully stumbling naturalism of the “real actors.” Then comes the moment when precisely what is real, or not, is put in question and the layers of truth and artifice pile up.

This production marks a great start for Kays. And while Graney will continue to work with The Hypocrites, he should rest easy that his company has a worthy new torch-bearer.