By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
Claire Voyient (Joanne Mack Robertson), left, shares some whimsy with Lafayette, who at other times believes he is the psychotherapist Carl Jung and also Professor Inanis (Mike Manolakes).
Tucson playwright Gavin Kaynor is diving straight into the rhythm of life with his new play “Identity Crisis,” a dance in the subterranean shadows of the subconscious that is definitely worth taking.
Flashing the cleverness and wit for which his writing is known, Kaynor has added a whole new side of personality – imagining what if that voice in your head became the sock puppet on your hand.
Kaynor uses this stage shtick for adding depth to the five troubled personalities at play in “Identity Crisis.”
He is also the director, setting the story in England, in the somewhat sterile Paradise Found Care Home. This is kind of a well-meaning mental institution for patients who are harmless but have serious problems with their own identity.
Nulla (Erin Hepler) is a young, repressed woman who is also a ventriloquist (maybe) whose hand puppet named Phanta often speaks for her, and also to her.
From the audience we see Nulla holding Phanta, and we hear Phanta's voice (Jessica Spenny) coming from behind a screen off to one side as Nulla moves about the stage. So we wonder if Phanta is supposed to represent a voice in Phanta's head – but maybe not.
Regardless, the device is a wonderful way to enrich the psychological mystery Kaynor constructs.
Such layers of reality are encouraged as we meet the care home's other patients, Claire Voyient (Joanne Mack Robertson) believes she has supernatural powers to see into the future.
Professor Inanis (Mike Manolakes) believes he is the American patriot from France, Gilbert du Motier the Marquis de Lafayette, speaking with a French accent.
The professor also believes he is the pioneering psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, who never stops grumbling in a German accent about how people always quote Freud but never quote Jung.
Setting “Identity Crisis” in motion is David Gunther playing the new patient who arrives with no name. He suffered a fall that has taken away his memory, and so is placed in the care home for his own protection. The patient refers to himself as “a voice without a narrative.” The others decide to call him Nemo.
Nemo is desperate to remember his past. Claire Voyient tells Nemo to forget the past. Instead, start building his future. The Professor agrees with Claire, mostly because the Professor has some sweet ideas about Claire's future. But Claire insists she can only be interested in the Professor when Jung and Lafayette stop coming around.
Meanwhile the reserved and repressed Nulla, always with Phanta on her arm, begins to have attractive thoughts about Nemo. Quickly, Phanta gets very upset about this. Is Nulla arguing with herself...or is there something else?
That is the set-up for 95 minutes of subtle laughs and pondering, without an intermission. “Identity Crisis” easily asks us to wonder, here in a time of “global warming” and “fake news,” if reality is not the ultimate fantasy.
My favorite question was wondering if each of us would be a different person if we had been born to different parents, or had different playmates in our earliest years. Or if just about anything from our childhood had been different.
Kaynor also tosses in a twisting plot of romance and mysterious events. Claire Voyient conducts a séance with unexpected results and argues that maybe love is the mysterious ingredient that defines our identity.
“Identity Crises” runs through July 28 with performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, in the Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre at the Historic Y, 738 N. Fifth Ave. Tickets are $20 at the door. For details and reservations, 780-7476.
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