Well (review)

Lisa Kron tells her audience what Wellis "about" within minutes after walking on stage: "This play is about illness and wellness—why some people are sick and other people are well." She clearly revels in the didacticism of her remark, adding, "this play is not about my mother and me." It is, she intones, "a vehicle for a theatrical exploration of these issues in both an individual and a community." These phrases are repeated numerous times throughout the performance, and Kron grows more and more insistent with each repetition.

While illness and wellness (whether in an individual or a community) are central to Well, it is equally about storytelling—the process, the limitations, the perpetual failures of art to truly capture and depict objective reality. Most importantly, it is about the desperate and continual need to keep on telling one's story in spite of it all.

Directed by Leigh Silverman, Wellis billed as a "solo show with other people." Solo performance is, of course, Kron's stock in trade, as made memorably clear through her previous piece, 2.5 Minute Ride. It is the "other people" who create the complications, mucking up the works as Kron struggles to maintain control over her story, to maintain the boundary between the personal and the universal ("this play is not about my mother and me"), and between reality and art ("it is a vehicle for theatrical exploration of these issues"), while the other characters, most notably her mother, played by Jayne Houdyshell, reject her vision, challenge her facts, and eventually refuse to participate in the charade, leaving Kron, once again, in a solo show.

The contrasting worlds of reality and theatre are physically grounded in the magnificent set design by Allen Moyer, complemented by Christopher Akerlind's lighting. The stage juxtaposes two very different aesthetics: stage right presents a grand, empty theatrical space—majestic white columns, a blue wash of light—seemingly infinite and universal in its possibilities. Stage left offers its opposite: a cluttered, junked up room—file cabinets, curio cabinets, knickknacks, table lamps, and a reclining chair—crammed into a claustrophobically small space. Stage right is Kron's world; stage left is her mother's domain, from which Kron (she hopes) has escaped.

On stage right, she presents sometimes comic, sometimes touching vignettes with her ensemble of actors (Kenajuan Bentley, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Joel Van Liew, and Welker White, all of whom play numerous roles). These include scenes from Kron's childhood and adolescence—from the "Westside Neighborhood Association," where her mother worked valiantly to help peacefully integrate the Lansing inner city where they lived, to the residential hospital allergy unit where Kron attempted to cure herself of the mysterious ailments that seem to plague her family.

Whereas in 2.5 Minute Ride, as the lone body on stage, Kron controlled the story and the world, things become less simple once actors are involved. Instead of embodying her vision and perspective, the sketches begin to disintegrate as her mother intervenes, speaking from her perch stage left, arguing that Lisa is not depicting the reality but an oversimplified (and therefore incorrect) version of it. As Lisa tries to keep the play on course, her actors take a shine to her mother and seem to prefer her version over Lisa's—asking her what the real story was, asking how they should play the allergy patients, asking her for help with their own allergies, crossing freely between the designated theatrical space and the cluttered space of reality.

Eventually, frustrated over her inability to control her own story, Kron abdicates, leaving her mother alone on stage valiantly attempting to convey the complexity of their shared history. After an offstage debate on what to do about what they see as Lisa's betrayal of her mother, the ensemble emerges from the wings and addresses the audience directly: "We apologize for this. We didn't have anything to do with it. We were just hired to be in it."

The metatheatrical elements have the potential to become too...