Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
One suspects that audiences
are supposed to be impressed that playwright Nathan Louis Jackson has refused
to take a side regarding the death penalty in his new play When I Come to Die, but honestly, we’re too busy being bored to
notice one way or another.
Relentlessly realistic, the
slow rhythms of prison life infiltrate every aspect of this dreary drama. Set
to be executed in Indiana via lethal injection, something went wrong and inmate
Damon Robinson (Chris Chalk) has lived. But don’t worry—though he’s on death
row for murder, he has a sob story for an excuse. Things just got out of hand!
He’s not really a bad guy!
How could Damon have time to
be a bad guy, when he’s so busy being kind to his jittery neighbor, fellow
death row inmate Roach (David Patrick Kelly), and enjoying a coffee klatch with
the prison priest (Neal Huff)? And no truly unredeemable man would ever attach
so much importance to the returned letters he’s mailed his family over the
years.
But because Jackson has
stacked everything so heavily in Damon’s favor, the play collapses in on
itself. Damon shows flashes of anger, instigating what other characters refer
to as a riot but which in reality sounds like a lot of prisoners shouting in
their cells, but he’s a dramatically inert character.
For a play in which the main
character escapes death, there’s very little about redemption or grace to be
found. Newspapers call Damon the “Miracle of Marion County,” but the only
reason for Jackson to have spared his creation seems to be so that Damon’s
estranged sister, Chantel (Amanda Mason Warren) can come to visit, asking for
the shoeboxes of his letters that he has stashed in his cell. There’s this
journalist, see, and he told her that they might make a nice book. And she’s
got bills to pay!
Alas, we’ve heard Damon read
aloud some of those letters, which read like a child’s missives from summer
camp. No publisher in his right mind would bother reprinting them, but they’re
treated as Chantel’s savior—and the sole reason for Damon’s life to have been
spared. That, and his growing friendship with the priest, who brings him some
measure of inner peace.
Emphasizing the routine of
prison life—from the act of putting on and taking off a prisoner’s handcuffs to
the guard (Michael Balderrama) walking a line painted along the
hallways—director Thomas Kail soothes his audience into a stupor. The cast may
yell and scream occasionally, but they’re not saying much. What can they say,
when Jackson has already taken away his characters’ hope for survival? Damon
may have escaped the death penalty once, but it speaks volumes about the
limited ambition of this work that after surviving, Damon’s biggest concern is
knowing when his execution is to be rescheduled.
Through Feb. 26, The Duke on
42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 646-223-3010; $20.