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To Virgil, the viewers’s information via Dael Orlandersmith’s slender, looking new solo play, “Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance,” there’s something hellish within the sight of the depressing lots commuting to dreaded jobs that carry them nothing greater than the flexibility to outlive.
With the fervour and cockiness of youth, Virgil at 20-something regards “these bitter, arduous, close-to-dead individuals” with contempt, puzzlement and the knowledge of escaping an identical destiny.
But discovering a function in life proves more durable than it appears to be like. By center age, Virgil feels “misplaced in a darkish wooden,” very like the narrator of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.” Orlandersmith’s Virgil, nonetheless, could be very a lot of this earth: a Bronx native transplanted to Manhattan, who has adolescent recollections of hanging out among the many lifeless at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Carried out by Orlandersmith at Rattlestick Theater in Greenwich Village, and directed by Neel Keller, her longtime collaborator, “Spiritus” will not be shy about loss of life or dying. It’s, in truth, the uncommon play that may educate you one thing about embalming and different mortuary abilities.
Virgil’s journey towards a beneficent existence begins with a member of the family’s funeral, continues via one other relative’s hospice keep after which achieves success with our hero’s compassion-driven determination to take care of the lifeless.
Whether or not that makes you lean in or recoil, any gruesomeness in “Spiritus” will rely on the vividness of your creativeness. Takeshi Kata’s circle-inspired set and Nicholas Hussong’s crisp projections contribute parts of naturalism to the manufacturing, however Orlandersmith largely lets her language paint the photographs. (Understated costume design is by Kaye Voyce, aptly murky lighting by Mary Louise Geiger and typically surreal sound by Lindsay Jones.)
Orlandersmith’s writing will not be at its most potent and incisive right here; “Spiritus” doesn’t have the richness of her performs “The Gimmick,” “Yellowman” or “Till the Flood.” But I adopted her raptly, curiously via this unusual, shocking and considerably too spare present. A meditation on residing that appears additionally like a curveball response to loss, it’s a mere hour lengthy.
Together with her customary fluidity, Orlandersmith slips out and in of the characters round Virgil: Jimmy, a funeral director who ministers to Virgil’s household and takes Virgil underneath his wing; Peggy, a hospice nurse, about whose goodness the script will get barely sappy; and Virgil’s father, one of many individuals Virgil regrets not having gotten to know higher whereas there was nonetheless time.
In efficiency, the play’s poetic ending felt abrupt to me, however I’m undecided that it’s. I believe I bought hung up on one thing that Virgil says shortly beforehand, a couple of lifeless toddler. The strains come throughout as false sentiment — secondhand recollections of the little lady as she was when she lived, offered as Virgil’s firsthand expertise.
“Spiritus” caught with me afterward, although, as did Virgil. A number of nights later, seeing Kate Douglas’s very totally different play “The Apiary” at Second Stage, I couldn’t cease fascinated about its thematic overlap with “Spiritus”: Each works are deeply involved with loss of life, caretaking and main a significant life. Should you’re constructing your individual two-show day, they’d make fairly a pair.
Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance
By means of March 9 at Rattlestick Theater, Manhattan; rattlestick.org. Working time: 1 hour.
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