Bina Oblique at TNC

Dream Within A Dream

Writer & Director Bina Sahrif

Cino Theatre @Theatre for the New City

Dec.13 - Dec 30 2018

With: Selar Duke, Kevin Mitchell Martin, Manuel Salazar, Bina Sharif

The script for “Dream Within a Dream” at Theatre for the New City, is intelligent, witty, and theatrically compelling.  It pulls the floor out from under us and leaves us suspended, like our disbelief, between hilarity and despair. It is not a comedy, but it is always funny. It is a dream play, but it forces us to confront reality.  One of the problems with absurdist theatre is that it lacks emotion. The confrontation with absurdity leaves the characters devoid of basic human feelings. But Bina Sharif’s “Dream Within A Dream” confronts human emotion head on. The script forces us to face the loneliness, contradiction, apathy, and injustice of an absurd world.  The playwright places us, and the characters, in a disjointed universe where falsehood, fake news, and overblown hyperbole, make us question, not only the honesty of others, and our own senses, but the very rules of the game we find ourselves in.

Selar Duke, Bina Sharif, Kevin Mitchell Martin

Sharif offers us an answer to bleak absurdity. It is the comfort of human companionship, and the realization that no matter how bad it gets, we have each other. 

Is the bohemian café where this takes place really there? Is the waiter really there? Does this play actually take place? Is there an audience? Is it raining? These existential questions are confronted, if not answered, by the characters, the playwright, and the audience. 

As members of the audience, the answers we give are as valid as those of the playwright.  The playwright is not answering the questions for us, but encouraging us to take a stand. 

The confrontation with the absurd cruelty of life leaves these characters trembling with compassion, and dancing with doubt.

The play has a strong formal architecture as well as a powerful appeal to our inner humanity. Several different realities intersect at oblique angles, not in direct linearity, but with circular precision. It is a play within a dream, within a dream.  

One of the most compelling dramatic devices of the evening, one that repeats throughout the play… is silence.

Kevin Mitchell Martin and Bina Sharif, sit at table, each totally attentive to the other, but neither one speaking. With silence they advance the plot, and sharpen our focus as members of the audience.

Wait! What? Can silence advance the plot? Yes, of course it can. Silence does not mean that nothing is happening. It may mean that the characters are at a loss for words, or that they are expressing the ineffable. They may be expressing a dramatic truth beyond what language has to offer.

In those moments of silence, the characters are communicating deeply and completely with each other. They offer a kind of radiant stillness that opens up and decontextualizes the other parts of the play. 

“Dream Within A Dream” is highly structured but it is not the conventional act structure of Broadway theatrical realism.

There is a frame at the beginning and end that sets off the structure and the meaning of the script.  

The story is framed by the hobbling on and off stage of the older couple. Throughout the script the two lead actors become many different aspects of their character. They are younger, older, sure of themselves, and confused. They are performing in a play and not performing. They are speaking directly to the audience and they do not exist at all.

This is a script that can be seen over again. It is rich in language and complex in ideas.

Manuel Salazar, as the Waiter, delivers his lines with clear articulation of the individual words, but also with insightful articulation of the ideas and contradictions that he portrays on stage. 

Selear Duke, as Dancer, and Actor, has great stage presence. She moves beautifully as well as delivering her lines with great understanding. 

Lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff who has been resident lighting designer at Theatre For the New City since 2000. In 2006 while reviewing another play at TNC I said that, “The spare but effective lighting designed by Alex Bartenieff sets the mood, enriches the portrayal of the characters and illuminates the meaning of the text.” His design for this production defines playing areas and shapes the performers without distracting us from the dramatic action. 

Theatre for the New City is an important venue. You haven’t seen theatre in New York if you haven’t seen something there.