Theater Review: An experimental Queen's Row probes apocalypse

Queens Row

Written and directed by Richard Maxwell

Starring Nazira Hanna, Soraya Nabipour, and Antonia Summer

New York City Players

The Kitchen, Manhattan

January 18, 2020

On a snowy evening, I journeyed to the Chelsea piers to a black box theater to see a new, very contemporary play by Richard Maxwell (b. 1967), originally from Fargo ND, but now a true Manhattanite in experimental style. He is known for his blank sets, focus on unadorned actors speaking plainly, and apocalyptic visions. Queens Row definitely fell into some of these baskets. The play consists of three twenty minute monologues delivered by different women, each speaking from a slightly raised circular podium on an all-black set. There is a fourth “character”, the lighting design by Sascha van Riel, an amazing panoply of strobes, spotlights, smoke, and penetrating laser-like beams that emerged from the floor, sometimes illustrating the character’s emotions or thought, sometimes seemingly with their own will.

There is a plot, but it emerges only in fits and starts. A woman impassively tells us of a US cataclysm with civil war based on racial and class tensions. Her town (Queens Row, Massachusetts) has been abandoned by industry and is dying. Her son has been killed by police in New Mexico, leaving a wife and child. This first performer speaks clearly, analytically, but mostly without emotion, as if the world’s violence and inequities have drained her. She says she takes refuge in the Koran, but rejects organized religion. A second woman then takes the stage, speaking more internally, emotionally, and obliquely, sometimes to a departed lover. We gradually realize that this is the first actor’s daughter, talking to her now-dead husband in New Mexico. This portion is more about personal tragedy and emotional loss, without reference to the civil war or to society in general. At the end of her monologue, the lights flash randomly and rapidly, as in a seizure, and we become aware of another woman on a far balcony, initially seen only in dark silhouette. Eventually she too takes her place on the podium. Her monologue is yet more internal. She can barely form words, sounding them out as a child reader would. Her speech and lack of affect are hard to decipher, and she sometimes communicates with gesture only. The lights are most vivid during her presentation. Eventually we start to make sense of her sentences, and she turns out to be the grown child of the unfortunate New Mexico couple. She seems damaged, and is trying to survive, perhaps by returning to Queens Row. The journey is now complete from dispassionate (outward) analysis to pure inward emotion. The logical fourth segment (not done) would be to have only the lights communicating.

The play was intriguing, and I loved the interplay of light with the mostly stationary characters. This design forced us to reconcile a mostly undramatic (or even undecipherable) presentation of words with a dramatic light play in the room, perhaps suggesting that our inner world is most important. The playwright provides no easy message or answers. The apocalyptic scenario is not used as a clear political allegory as it usually is. The dark room and spot-lit, un-theatrical presentations by the characters focus on the importance of the individual, but also on their isolation. I was uneasy during the one-hour play, and never really got my bearing as to meaning, themes, or direction. I made more decisions about it by reflecting in the following days. So I cannot say I really enjoyed Queens Row, but was instead provoked by it. I suspect that this is what the author intended.