Humpty Dumpty
Written by Eric Bogosian; Directed by Ella Jane New
Presented by Chain Theatre
Chain Theatre | 312 W 36th St. 4th floor, New York, NY 10018
April 3rd - May 3rd
I have a friend whose family has a cabin on a small pond in Pennsylvania. I spent many a holiday weekend there in the early 2000s jumping in the pond next to a cornfield. I rarely went into town while I was there, and my only real memory was of an enormous Walmart that gave me anxiety after years of shopping in neighborhood bodegas. This wasn’t necessarily remote, but it was the country - to city folk at the least. Once we decided to do a girls’ weekend in the fall. It was blustery as we sat around the table playing some board game with the 2nd bottle of wine well under way, when the lights went out. We shrieked. We then thought we were being silly. Until we looked out, and down the road in the distance the “other” house had its lights on. It was only us. The last house before the cornfield.
Eric Bogosian’s Humpty Dumpty begins as two couples, one from NYC and one from LA, go Upstate for a week in the country. It’s the early 2000s and their flip-phones barely get service, and Nicole (Christina Elise Perry) needs to call her assistant back on the landline. After getting the fire going, Max (Kirk Gostkowski) is about to getting lucky before his friends arrive, but Nicole really needs to call her assistant again, and then the caretaker, Nat (Brandon Hughes) shows up to fix the ‘antique’ stove, and by that point Troy (Gabriel Rysdahl) and Spoon (Marie Dinolan) arrive. The gang’s all here. Let the games begin.
The first game isn’t Scrabble, but who is the biggest horse’s ass. The snobbery that would be touted as widening the political divide in America post-9/11 is on full display. They weren’t known as ‘coastal elites’ yet, but they will be. Troy is well on his way to winning with his yellow caviar, expensive wine, and his single estate olives that he trekked with him from LA. He’s the screenwriter that envies the carefree life of Ned, the caretaker, in the most insulting, belittling ways possible. Meanwhile, Spoon, his arm-candy, PDA-loving, actress/personality thinks Xanadu, like Shangdu not like Olivia Newton-John, is spelt like Scooby-Doo. Oh, and Nicole met Tiger Woods. (Early 2000s Tiger Woods is on his ascent, Bogosian could never imagine his fall from grace when this was written which makes this nod all the more special.) As a transplanted New Yorker, I’m left sympathizing with Max and hoping that I’ve never been one of these jackasses, but the odds aren’t in my favor.
Maybe they should have left immediately when the power went out.
What begins with ‘it was probably an accident taking down a powerline’ progresses to terrorist attack progresses to The Walking Dead civilization over the next 90 minutes. Adversity brings out people’s true colors, and expensive loafers aren’t made for mud and blood-letting. Like my friends and I in the house by the cornfield, fear and paranoia run rampant, but in Humpty-Dumpty it doesn’t disappear with the rising of the sun.
Much of this ensemble has worked together before under the direction of Ella Jane New. Gostkowski, Perry, and New are Chain Theatre’s Artistic Director, Director of Development, and Play Lab Director respectively. Familiarity does not breed contempt here. The performances are nuanced and the anxiety palpable. Perry is on the verge of breaking apart like Humpty-Dumpty himself. Dinolan turns into a ghost of her former self in front of our very eyes. Her eerie transformation is refined and all the more heartbreaking for it. Rysdahl’s shallowness does not disappoint. Hughes’ calm which stands in juxtaposition to the visitors’ chaos embodies the kindness they are lucky to find but cannot accept. Gostkowski’s performance brought to mind Nicholson’s Shining as circumstances began to get the better of him. All of this tucked neatly into David Henderson’s set which is so perfectly detailed that you just know those quilts smell smoky from the wood burning fireplace.
This play is returning to the stage at a time when children who grew-up with smart technology are joining the workforce. They have no concept of why we say “hang-up” the phone, and know no more how to read an analog clock than wind one. If people who relied on Palm Pilots and beepers unraveled, what would become of us today? This play predates Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. And just like the play’s reference to the movie Outbreak proves prophetic. Perhaps the only thing Humpty Dumpty didn’t foresee is the price of eggs.
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Review by Nicole Jesson.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on April 6th, 2025. All rights reserved.