"A Play on Words"

Theatre review
"A Play on Words" at the Kitchen Theatre
Ithaca Times
March 4, 2009
807 words
"Word Matters"

full text here

Word Matters

Mark Tedeschi

"A Play on Words," by Brian Dykstra. Directed by Margarett Perry. Starring Brian Dykstra and Mark Boyett. With scenic designer Kelly Syring, costume designer Hanna Kochman, lighting designer E.D. Intemann, and sound designer Nate Richardson.

In the summer of 1995, Bill Watterson wrote what might be my all-time favorite Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Calvin tells Hobbes that the point of a conversation is to block another person's thoughts and take the subject matter in the opposite direction. Hobbes counters that conversations aren't contests, and Calvin awards him a point.

Watterson nails the humorous side of the one-upmanship inherent in most verbal exchanges, a subject that is also of great interest to playwright/actor darling of the Kitchen Theatre, Brian Dykstra. In last year's "The Two of You," his meticulous dialogue is itself nearly a character, bringing an extra, tangible potency to the theme and tone. While "The Two of You" is a deliberation on theatrical protocol, his new play tackles the rhyme and reason of communication.

In the autological "A Play on Words," a world premiere production at the Kitchen, Dykstra distills his love of linguistics into a play about - and positively spilling over with - language. "A Play on Words" features two actors - Dykstra as Max and Mark Boyett (last seen at the Kitchen in Dykstra's "Clean Alternatives" two years ago) as Rusty - and no doubt intentionally, both characters' names have uses as other parts of speech. Best friends since high school, Max and Boyett have a backyard conversation that alternates paces quick and slow, reaches scales epic and trifling, and leafs through just about every aspect of language you can cover in that amount of time.

So, what's the story? Dkystra knows you're thinking that, too - that's why he made it the first line of his play. Rusty is trying to find out what Max is doing; it looks like he's staring riveted at a piece of cardboard, but we don't get any specifics until well after Max pesters Rusty to explain whether he actually wants to know, why he asked him in that manner, and what he was thinking immediately before he brought it up.

Max and Rusty interrupt some of each other's sidebars before they can carry on. Often the chain-reaction changes in discussion topic deviate so far from the original issue that neither character - let alone the audience - can remember where the exchange began. Consequently, we don't find out what Max's story actually is until Rusty refuses to let the conversation move elsewhere.

Max is a button-pusher, and Dykstra plays him as recurrently disagreeable. In one moment, he'll demand that Rusty elucidate on every minutiae of his contribution; in the next, he'll assert that their digressions are, simply, "not fun." Boyett reveals Rusty's enthusiasm when he finds he can jump on the offensive, often arguing for the position that "language is the opposite of communication." Max chides his naïve position and they engage in long segues on the semantics of semantics, reappropriated commercial jingle lyrics, and apocryphal stories about famous authors' writing processes.

Undeniably, though, they are good friends - what's a little jocular prodding between buddies? All the while, both deliver the incredibly thick dialogue (they even nail a portion of tongue twisters!) with expert timing and (when called for) emotional output - patently due to Margaret Perry's patient direction.

The set, lighting and sound are minimal so as to focus on the guys' confabulation. Their chinwag takes place in late afternoon, and a careful eye will catch the subtle shifts in lighting that indicate a gradual sunset. The siding of a house and a toy basketball hoop line the background; the ground is divided evenly between a sheet of artificial turf and a scattering of words enclosed in boxes reminiscent of magnetic poetry.

And speaking of words, what would a play with this wonderful title be without some euphonious vocables? Here are some of the good ones: obfuscate, curmudgeon, leviathan, ecclesiastical, moratorium, intractable, pithy. Dykstra even invents some of his own words (a perfectly cromulent thing to do) and dissects the etymology (or is it entomology?) of grog, "give a hang," and E-I-E-I-O.

Dykstra's consistently daring ambition lends itself to magnifying-glass inspection; after all, a piece focusing on language should itself boast consummate phraseology. Good news - for the most part, it does. The main problems come from Dykstra's inability to resist an injection of the same hyper-left worldview amplified in his one-man show "The Jesus Factor" last year. The potshots at "faith-addicted Christian fundamentalists," fashion models, and "alcoholic politicians" draw too-easy laughs from an Ithacan audience but distract from the best parts of Dykstrian writing.

In "A Play on Words," Dykstra's intelligence affords his work a charming wit and a strong current of thoughtful commentary. We typically take language for granted, giving it a transparency in our lives. Word junkies, behavioral scientists, phonologists - see "A Play on Words" once, even twice. You'll give your vocabulary some exercise and chuckle at the confusing, bizarre structures we've customarily adopted.


Brian Dykstra and Mark Boyett in ‘A Play on Words,’ now at the Kitchen Theatre. (Photo by Megan Pugh)