Body Awareness
Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd, 479-PLAY,
Through May 8
Running time: 1 hr., 40 min.
“Is there such a thing as a right reason?” Religions, political parties, life-changing decisions have been made on the stone-cold principle of doing what’s right. “Is there such a thing as a right reason?” Tea parties and marriages have been founded on what’s right. So when Joyce, on the precipice of making a decision that might destroy her three-year relationship with Phyllis, is asked that question, she doesn’t want to have to think about it. She wants to be right. She wants to be right in the face of Phyllis’ rage, disgust, and disappointment. She’s just not sure if she is.
Body Awareness, at its heart, is the story of the members of a cobbled-together family trying to do what they think is right in the face of their fellow loved ones’ disagreement. Joyce’s 21-year-old son, Jared, won’t admit that he has Asperger’s syndrome despite overwhelming evidence thereof. Phyllis has trouble when anything – including Joyce – escapes her control. And Joyce’s issues come from a darker place of sexuality that clearly affects her.
Each family member is dealing with issues both psychological and physiological in nature when a guest artist for the local university’s Body Awareness Week stays at their home (in the classic trope of a stranger coming to town and shaking things up).
From this outline of the plot, Body Awareness may sound like a drama. And it certainly has its grounded, serious, even sad moments. But this is a sharp, funny play. The liner notes for Hyde Park Theatre’s production quote playwright Annie Baker saying: “Most naturalistic plays I see are a bunch of middle- or upper-middle-class people being witty. I don’t actually find wittiness that funny.” I find this slightly strange, given that all of the characters in this play are middle- or upper-middle-class white folk living in a liberal college town, but Baker’s script has genuine people reacting both genuinely and humorously. This is no small feat.
Now, Body Awareness does have something of a sitcom sheen to it. Scenes are more episodic in nature and almost always end on some sort of punch line. Sometimes characters let transgressions pass a little more easily than you think they might in life. Sympathy, however, comes from believing and caring in the characters, and between playwright Baker and director Ken Webster, that’s not an issue. The performances in Body Awareness are very naturalistic (excluding Jared, whose character is like a more stunted, sadder version of Dwight from The Office), and the cast is simply impeccable.
Life and fiction may be easier to craft when black and white, but rarely does it present us with anything interesting. Good people doing bad things for what may be good reasons – now that’s interesting. It’s rare that you find a story that is both real and really funny, but Body Awareness succeeds on both those fronts.
This article appears in May 7 • 2010.