In Hanna Kime’s new play “The Targeted,” an unusual black comedy now receiving its world premiere from A Red Orchid Theater, we vicariously attend a “solidarity and truth summit,” wherein some eclectic individuals gather in a summer camp-like environment outside of Boston to explore why they all believe themselves to be the victims of various levels of deep state, intergovernmental harassment, all of the way up to including torture.
Nonetheless, one of them notes at one point, “just because we are all being targeted doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.”
In its study of the causes, nature and consequences of paranoia, and its intentional ambivalence as to the line between what fears actually are justified and the spiraling of the pressured human mind, the show has a lot in common with Tracy Letts’ “Bug,” although it certainly expands the scope of the work from one or two individuals to a broader group, including an intense woman named Rhonda (Kirsten Fitzgerald), a kind senior named Didi (Natalie West) and a “minivan mom” named Sherry (Sadieh Rifai), who has not yet traveled so far down this road. The play also expands on the idea of how such feelings can be nurtured and exploited, in this case mostly by a leader named Jeff (Lawrence Grimm, in full-on creepy mode), who knows how to dazzle his campers with his claimed qualifications and use their feelings of helplessness for his own advantage, whatever that might be.
It’s an interesting and arresting topic for a play: instant communities under external stress invariably make interesting works, and this one has the fresh approach of exploring when the level of stress far outpaces the logic — although if we all suffer from an electro-mechanical attack sometime soon, I will be forced to eat my words. And, of course, history has some confirmation of Joseph Heller’s famous line, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”
Kime, who is based in Chicago and premiered “Dogs” at the Red Theater (which I didn’t see), is clearly interested not just in charting the contours and rationales of this community, if that’s the word, but also in exploring how the paranoid actually live their lives, and how they reconcile the need to sell lead-lined raincoats (one never knows) with having a laugh or two in the woods. She introduces an actual doctor, Mia (Stephanie Shum) into this group, giving her a stranger-in-a-strange-land role to work with; Mia is there because she is trying to understand her struggling brother, Eric (Glenn Obrero), a young, card-carrying member of the targeted. Some of the most involving scenes in the play, thanks in no small measure to Shum’s intense and empathetic performance, come from Mia’s befuddlement at how best to counter all these people with feelings, intensely held, by insisting on scientific logic, at least as she thinks she understands it.
That’s a huge flash point in American society, far beyond this play.
The script sometimes retreats from its own intensity, just when it is getting going, and although director Grace Dolezal-Ng’s production has its moments, it sometimes lacks focus and gets a bit lost in the bunkbeds and the deep contours of the relatively large space at the Chopin Theatre. (I wish this play had been staged in Red Orchid’s home on Wells Street instead.) At times, this struck me more like a cross-cutting screenplay or teleplay than a theatrical drama in that it lacks scenes of sufficiently long length to really explicate these characters, as well as needing more in-the-moment tension to keep the drive going and pull the audience into the complex inner lives of these suffering souls.
The play is only 90 minutes and, right now, it feels rather more like a very promising pilot to me. One can see why. One can also see the talent of the writer.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
Review: “The Targeted” (2.5 stars)
When: Through June 14
Where: A Red Orchid at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $55 at aredorchidtheatre.org
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