| DESCRIBE THE NIGHT (great title) is appreciably ambitious, but it's overworked. Rajiv Joseph (BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO, GUARDS AT THE TAJ) aims here for a sort of intimate historical-drama, but the play is neither as wide nor as deep as he intends. The narrative is fractured it seems in the service of one of the play's central premises--all memories, all stories are fragmentary--but it doesn't coalesce in your mind, and so you're left with the feeling that this particular story would have been better, more cogently told linearly. Also, there's a good deal of thematic repetition pertaining to the difficulties discerning lies from the the truth and, in particular, the ways in which subjectivity, especially when its politically enacted, can both enslave and release us. DESCRIBE THE NIGHT is convoluted, but kudos to Joseph for writing large and for attempting to depict the insidious elaborations of totalitarianism that has stained Russian history and now seems on the brink of staining our own. |
