Thomas Derrah

The show begins even before the official curtain time as the eight actors are in their places, silently roaming barefoot around the wire enclosure that contains Cristina Todesco's set. The stage is placed in the center of the Roberts Studio Theatre with the audience seated on opposite sides facing each other. It is always interesting to watch other people watching a play, to see how they are experiencing it and discover whether or not it mirrors your own reactions. In this case, viewing each other through the 10-foot-tall cage gives the appearance of the audience being captive, unable to escape the nightmares and monsters that populate the play. Everywhere you look, there's the potential to see something disturbing or something amusing, being enacted live or on one of a dozen television screens stationed around the perimeter of the stage.

In one long act, Kuntz overlaps five stories featuring twenty-two characters (most of the actors play multiple roles) in numerous locales, including an airplane, a bar, a restaurant, a couple of apartments, and a psychiatrist's office. To provide some clarity, the press kit includes a chart of concentric circles labeled "A Visual Guide to the Nested Realities in Necessary Monsters," a Venn diagram of sorts that shows how the stories fit inside of one another. However, other than the majority of Elisabetta Polito's costumes, nothing is black and white in this mad, mad, mad, mad world of stoners, psychopaths, loners and lovers. In fact, Necessary Monsters lives in the gray, shadowy netherworld of anyone's and everyone's irrational fears.

The cast seems game for anything, and Gammons has given them latitude to flesh out their characters informed by their own experiences and inner demons. Greg Maraio (Victor, Clint) and Michael Underhill (Drake) have the most interesting story lines and both give nuanced performances to capture the many aspects of their characters. Stacy Fischer (Flora) morphs seamlessly from a drug-addled state into a scary stalker. McCaela Donovan (Cissa, Gillian) plays a special effects film editor, and several of the bits in the play turn out to be scenes in her film. When she inadvertently wanders into a shot in progress and disrupts filming, Evelyn Howe (Midge, Faye) goes ballistic on her. The fact that she's wearing a butterfly costume and singing "You Are My Sunshine" to a group of children wearing furry animal hats makes the scene incredibly surreal.

Kuntz plays a psychiatrist tending to a patient who just happens to be his wife (Georgia Lyman). Her eating disorder, which she describes as a "gnawing hunger," seems to have a direct correlation to the nature of their relationship, with his superciliousness casting her neediness in high relief. In his role as a waiter, Kuntz is softer and down-to-earth, while Lyman is much more in control as a dominatrix in someone else's dreams. While all of these actors and their stories intertwine, Thomas Derrah (Greer) lays low (literally) until the time comes for his extended monologue and he rouses with a groan, for all appearances like a bear coming out of hibernation.

Greer is a dilettante, attending a charity function for she-knows-not-whom, carrying on a one-sided conversation during which she displays an egotistical lack of self-awareness. As she moves around the stage, the rest of the actors lay motionless on the floor and she steps over them as if they are an annoyance. Kuntz has written some very funny lines into this speech and Derrah's delivery of them is great, but his exceptional ability to capture the mannerisms, carriage and aura of this unhappy woman makes his one scene the runaway high water mark of the play.

If one of the joys in attending live theater is the communal experience, then Necessary Monsters is a conundrum. On the one hand, the audience in the intimate Roberts is arguably drawn closer together by facing each other in their "captivity." On the other hand, the play triggers countless reactions based on one's individual mental and emotional buttons. However, whether we are regularly in touch with them or not, it is undeniable that we all have our fears or monsters. Perhaps Kuntz is telling us to face them and embrace them. Be grateful that you don't have his.

Necessary Monsters performances through January 3, 2015, at SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA; Box Office 617-933-8600 or www.SpeakEasyStage.com.

Written by John Kuntz, Directed by David R. Gammons; Scenic Design, Cristina Todesco; Costume Design, Elisabetta Polito; Lighting Design, Jeff Adelberg; Sound/Video Design, Adam Stone; Production Stage Manager, L. Arkansas Light; Dramaturg, Walt McGough

Cast (in alphabetical order): Thomas Derrah, McCaela Donovan, Stacy Fischer, Evelyn Howe, John Kuntz, Georgia Lyman, Greg Maraio, Michael Underhill

Photo: Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo