At The Edge Off Broadway, Red Theater’s production of Lisa Sanaye Dring’s Kairos proves that no amount of pretty production design can overcome a poor script. The two-actor play follows the relationship of Gina and David, from their car-crash meet-cute until old age, through their marriage, squabbles about having children, and existential crisis over whether to become immortal. Yes, in the society of Kairos, every healthy 30-year-old can take a drug—the not-so-subtly named “Prometheus”—and live forever. Where Kairos fails, to put it bluntly, is that, by the play’s end, one does not care enough about Gina and David to mind whether they live or die.
Neither Tamsen Glaser (Gina) nor Johnard Washington (David) are at fault for this failure in evoking pathos (see, we can all use Greek words). Both actors are more than capable of handling Kairos’s heavy subject matter, and the pair’s physical intimacy is strong, even if the audience is left wanting for chemistry. Johnard, in particular, plays David’s insecurity well; it is there in every step he takes, in his shoulders, and in the way he contorts his face. But despite their nimblest efforts, he and Glaser are weighed down by Dring’s script. Kairos bumps around, trampling over moments of real impact, jumping every which way, and veering into cliche when it aims for true connection.
Kairos’s dialogue is inhuman, though seemingly without intent. Gina and David talk in bold, exclamatory phrases, frequently going from watching TV together to making comments like “I’m just not sure if I want to play whatever game humanity is playing right now” or “time as spiral, as season, as rhythm.” They are not as wise as they think they are. This, of course, is not a problem; characters in the theater are frequently dramatically oblivious to the world around them. Where Kairos falters is in overestimating its own insight. For a play contending with themes of love, death, eugenics, and immortality, Kairos is wholly unsure of itself and so says frightfully little.
Script aside, Red Theater’s production generally succeeds. There is a pleasant, unearthly quality to Manuel Ortiz’s scene design, which pairs minimalist furniture with a massive glowing tree. Haleigh Kent’s costume design also sticks out; both characters dress rather simply, and yet, by the play’s end, the assembly of white, maroon, and grey shirts and coats has conveyed real personality. And, quite wonderfully, both characters perform costume changes on stage, as if in their own closets. Gina and David only rarely leave the stage, and so the audience is thrust into the couple’s relationship with a real sense of maybe-I-should-not-be-privy-to-this.
It is a shame, then, that these are the moments to which one gets to be privy. Who would want to be a voyeur of a boring life and a simple relationship? “I don’t know who I am,” David tells Gina after his father dies. “You will one day,” she replies. Show me that play then, the one that has a sense of who—and what—it is about. And no, Kairos’s pre-filmed final scene, where the elderly couple reminisce When Harry Met Sally–style, does not count.
Red Theater’s production of Lisa Sanaye Dring’s Kairos is at The Edge Off Broadway through May 18.
