Mason Holdings takes audiences on a wild ride through a somewhat true story
We’re in a cramped but stately sitting room facing a casket, waiting for the funeral to begin. Sympathy cards and flowers flood the small parlor. Everyone around me is drinking the complimentary wine. But I can’t tell if the pretty woman (Tracy Weller) walking up to the casket is actually in mourning. She’s draped a black veil over her head but then tosses it aside after a moment. And yet, she seems less sad and more, well, angry.
She’s arguing with a handsome man (Devin Burnam) who is cheekily playing music in the back; apparently, she finds “Prelude to a Funeral” to be inappropriate.
“My father,” she states, with a long, deep breath, “was a son of a bitch.”
She goes on to describe Carl von Casel: a man who left his wife and children, and went on to fall in love with a married woman, Elena Hoyos. A married woman who, soon after their wedding, died. And then, he’s accused of digging up her body and having sex with the corpse. For years. Dressing up the corpse. Living with the corpse. Lying in bed with the corpse. The word “necrophilia” hangs in the air as she continues her diatribe. What looks like an entire glass of vodka materializes out of nowhere.
She accuses all of us at the funeral of being gawkers and lookie-loos who read all about Elena in the papers and came out of morbid curiosity.
Her speech ends, as expected, in spilled drinks.
Our humble organist stands befuddled as the stunned crowd watches his sister stumble away, with two flower arrangements tucked under her arm.
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Then, suddenly, we zoom through space and time, and he, and she, are two horny teenagers who’ve broken into a crypt in the middle of a rainstorm.
Consumption, the latest play by theatre company Mason Holdings, is hard to sum up. The company, helmed by Founder/Artistic Director Tracy Weller, describes the work as an experiential exploration on the “disease of love” set in an aging Victorian home, which is about as good a description as any. At the core of the work are the stories of five connected couples whose narratives seem linked through both coincidence and scandal, somewhat in the vein of Cloud Atlas.
These multiple sets of couples are played with gusto and truly impressive stamina by the same two actors throughout the duration of the 90 minute show. The aforementioned Weller and Burnam (who also happens to be Consumption’s playwright) bounce between a pair of wise cracking cops on the trail of a cold case, a philandering doctor and his terminally ill patient, two high school sweethearts waiting to get the hell out of Dodge, a cruise ship fortune teller and the customer who hits on her, and a TV sitcom husband and wife who enthusiastically trade zingers even as their marriage is slowly falling apart.
The gorgeous venue, built in 1930, is an old Victorian house now known as the Beverley Social Club, and is enormous by New York City standards. The play takes over the entire first floor; Consumption makes good use of the two parlors, foyer, staircase, and grand ballroom, moving the audience slowly through different spaces of the house throughout the course of the evening. We move through space and time as the man and woman constant define and redefine their relationship, going from stranger to spouse to secret lover in any given moment. No matter how much they try, fate tosses them together again and again.
As we jump from one timeline to the next, it feels like the theatrical equivalent of rotating an MC Escher drawing over and over. The transitions are sudden, but never jarring. We’re all witnesses to a fever dream—one that gets stranger and stranger over time. That tall German doctor somehow ends up on the sitcom; the two cops start digging around the backstory of von Casel and Hoyos; the fortune teller suddenly realizes her ever-persistent customer is dead ringer for the husband on an old TV show. The intimate nature and scenic design of the piece makes it feel like we’re watching ninety minutes of cinematic close-up. Luckily, Weller and Burnham have the chemistry needed to support the complicated script and maintain the audience’s focus. The writing in Consumption is smart and generally pleasing, even if some of the lines can come off as a bit too self-aware or showy.
Yet it’s never quite clear what the audience’s role is in the piece. At times we’re directly addressed as fellow mourners or police academy rookies, but, mostly, we’re simply flies on the wall. Without knowing an explicit role as an audience member in the piece, it’s hard to be at the ready when an actor asks a question of us, or know when it’s appropriate to laugh out loud at a joke. During one timeline, it’s implied that we’re the sitcom’s studio audience, which feels awkward when an actor asks an audience member to do something; plus, the bright studio lights, laugh track, and “on air sign” are at odds with the old, stately home.
Our role as an audience keeps shifting as the show continues, just like the five couples keep shifting and moving as the multiple timelines fold in upon themselves. The linkages between the five couples are tenuous — sometimes even barely there — and narratively, the payoffs are uneven as each of the five stories comes to a conclusion. But the performances more than make up for it, as do the many small moments of surprise and delight during the show. Even if the pieces don’t all quite fit together in Consumption, it’s still a heck of a ride.
Consumption continues in Brooklyn through December 8. Tickets are $25.
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