The Voices in Your Head

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In this return engagement of the site-specific The Voices in Your Head we are often asked to give pause in order to consider how differently we all process our grief. Earlier this summer another play, someone spectacular, tackled the same subject matter but in a more predictable way. With that play, we never forgot we were in a theater watching a support group navigating their weekly session (but for that evening without the benefit of their group leader). While that was presented in thrust staging (the audience surrounding the actors on three sides), The Voices in Your Head created by Grier Mathiot and Billy McEntee welcomes us as new members to the group.

We enter the renamed St. Lidwina’s, after the Dutch patron saint of chronic pain and ice skating (think Nancy Kerrigan and Brian Boitano popping oxycodone), to find chairs arranged in a circle. We are asked to take a seat as a member of the group in this one-stop shop of tea, cookies and healing. Apparently as St. Lydia’s Dinner Church it is an all-embracing church that includes a working oven and shared book collection that caters to a devoted congregation in this Gowanus neighborhood. The fact that it is being used as an immersive theater space is just an outgrowth of what they usually do.

Standing outside, we watch as they prepare the space for us. Regina lets us in and asks for us to sign-in at the desk…all of us are expected, so there won’t be any surprises, or will there be? Gwen, the group leader, brings out the cookies and sets up tea and mugs. There’s a chalkboard that details who is responsible for bringing in the treats each week. This week it’s Gwen and the missing-in-action Vivian. There’s twenty or so chairs. They will for the most part be filled by the audience; while two are empty for “late arrivals,” the rest are occupied by the actors. Gwen sets the ground rules – three stories will be told and those stories she has set up in prior conversations. This is so to eliminate any serious attempt for an audience person to actively participate. Let’s not forget this is scripted (right down to any asides and conversations that happen during an unofficial break in the action).

The premise for this play, of sharing only three stories, at only one hour, makes the play feel somewhat underwritten. We know about Regina’s husband choking to death on cheese at a party. We know about Blake, the latecomer who tells the tale of being a mall elf handing his life partner (dressed as Santa) a heavy child that makes him go into cardiac arrest in front of waiting children. As Hadiya, a newbie to the group, struggles to complete the story of her deceased sister we feel as she does – that her story is an afterthought in the programming this evening. Her persistence to tell about her Zumba experience does turn into a riotous full company dance routine to Laura Branigan’s classic “Gloria.” If it weren’t for the quiet and morose Sandra attacking the others during a meltdown, we’d know nothing about the back stories of Caleb, Vivian and Gwen. As grateful as we are to Sandra for setting the record straight, we realize when she’s done that we are still left knowing little about her.

Performances are uniformly fine with the stage time they are given, yet there are standout performances. Late to the session but a total joy is the lovely Marcia DeBonis as Vivian, the older woman whose husband died driving while being ”worked on” by a prostitute. Vivian probably needs this group the most – she actively takes notes on things she hears that she’d like to refer to later. Even during the “break” her exchange with the young Caleb as he offers her a ride home after the session ends in a hug – she is touched by the simplest kindnesses that are thrown her way.

Erin Treadway as the sullen Sandra fills the silences with body language that speaks volumes about a woman who isn’t letting anyone in again. Her full-throttle meltdown sparked by Gwen’s dismissing a new unannounced arrival is priceless. It’s the “poster-child” for watching out for those quiet ones! Probably one of the more interesting moments is during the break – Sandra goes outside for a smoke and Vivian joins her. We watch their physical carriage on the other side of the window – two women with a history of hurt in a delicate bumper car dance figuring out how they can speak to each other. We don’t get to hear this dialogue yet it’s infinitely more captivating than the conversations of the other characters that remain in the room. Her last moment is a touching one with Caleb where she tries to soften his anxiety about going to college.

Alex Gibson as Blake turns his story of woe into a very funny centerpiece of the play. His entrance thankfully interrupts an uncomfortable moment between Sandra and Gwen – neither woman gets the upper hand, and the tension can be cut with a knife. Blake is the life of this party – he fashions his story as a monologue that can be the bedrock for a mini-series: gay men moving to the suburbs making their straight neighbors super uncomfortable as they try to fit in. His now deceased partner would compete with a hate-mongering neighbor to see who puts up the most ostentatious Christmas decorations. This extends into their livelihoods portraying Santa and his elf at the local mall. After pontificating “Are people born queer, or do they have queerness thrust upon them?” he concludes with “Okay I’m gonna go. I think I got what I needed.” His appearance amounted to a test run of his very funny pity party on this unsuspecting group.

Christian Caro as Caleb, Daphne Overbeck as Regina, and Jehan O. Young as Hadiya don’t have enough of a story to make an audience come with them for the ride. Jamila Sabares-Klemm as Gwen is appropriately on edge being responsible for a room of deeply sad people that ultimately position her to feel better about her own misfortune. One moment that doesn’t ring true is when she dismisses the man who comes in unannounced. True, he is probably an imposter, but he is probably just an interloper rather than someone who has come to poke fun at others’ expense. Tom Mezger is appropriately defenseless in his cameo as the quixotic man who leaves alone again.

Director Ryan Dobrin does wonders with filling the room with business. Like at any such meeting there is a lot going on – each character has a continuous physical life whether speaking or listening and most of these are subtleties. Some business is brought to our attention by the other actors – Caleb always looking at his phone, Vivian making yarn balls, but they’re never out of character. Scenic, lighting and costume design are not credited, nor should they be as this is very much a meeting in a very cozy lived-in and worked-in space.

The Voices in Your Head is definitely worth a visit, but at an hour’s length ends somewhat abruptly and makes us feel that we may have overstayed our welcome.

The Voices in Your Head (through October 7, 2024)

Egg & Spoon Theatre Collective in association with Billy McEntee & Those Guilty Creatures

St. Lydia’s Dinner Church, 304 Bond Street, in Brooklyn

For tickets, visit http://www.stlydias.org/events

Running time: one hour without an intermission