Missa Solemnis, or the Play about Henry

Strong performances overcome a clunky script to bring powerful emotion to Missa Solemnis, or the Play about Henry as it tells the true story of a 32-year-old Mormon man, Henry Stuart Matis, who killed himself eight years ago after a lifelong struggle between his homosexuality and his faith.


Reviewed by Meg van Huygen

With a thunderclap and a flash of lightning, Missa Solemnis, or the Play about Henry grabs your attention at the start. Right away, we meet the full cast and are directly introduced to their fates, and then we travel back in time to see how they arrived there. The story concerns Henry, a gay Californian man who lives with his family and struggles with his devout Mormonism, which places homosexuality second only to murder. Matt Huffman is well cast as Henry: believable in appearance, soft and serious, and earnest in his delivery. His prayers to Heaven for understanding are particularly moving and effective.

Henry’s parents are equally moving, especially his father, Fred (Bill Fairbairn), whose combination of rough and tumble, go-get-’em dad-talk and his responsibility to the church endears him to the audience while simultaneously showing us his plight. Fred can accept his son as he is, but he doesn’t trust the community to, so he arranges a meeting between Henry and an LDS bishop with a reputation for “curing” boys with Henry’s “condition.”

Although deceptively simple, the set is remarkably adaptable. Lighting and a single curtain take us from a Mormon kitchen to a Chelsea pad to the bishop’s living room, the last of which hosts the play’s crown jewel, Bishop Bob Rhodes (Warren Katz). Katz’s delivery vacillates between gravity and disarming lightness in such a comforting pattern that it brings both Henry and the audience some relief and hope. What could have been a preachy, difficult scene is transformed into revelation. The humanity that Bishop Rhodes displays elevates the emotional resonance of their conversation.

Nearly as resonant is the playful (and, for a while, naked) performance of Jai Catalano as Todd Elliott, Henry’s secret lover in New York. Catalano’s easy attitude fits the sort of guy who might believably pick up an awkward Mormon boy who orders a glass of milk at a gay bar, and who might just guide him through his coming out as well. His behavior is markedly more familiar than the rest of the cast’s, which is appropriate, as the world he comes from is so very different than Henry’s, so much closer to our own.

In contrast, Gail Winar is less convincing as Henry’s mother, Marilyn; one gets the sense that the playwright didn’t like the character very much. (She’s also ill-served by an unfortunate wig.) However, Winar redeems herself toward the end of the story with a sorrowful howl of raw, honest power. Even after the lights come up, that anguish remained echoing through the audience: some dabbed their eyes, some were too stunned to do even that.

Missa Solemnis, or the Play about Henry is an important and thought-provoking play about the age-old battle between religion and sexuality-—two invisible forces that control and direct our lives—-and theatergoers who wish to lead what Socrates termed "an examined life" should pay attention.

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Missa Solemnis, or the Play about Henry (1 hour, 40 minutes, no intermission)
TBG Arts Complex (312 West 36th Street, 3rd floor)
Tickets: $18
Wed - Sat, 8pm, through November 22nd

The Files

A minimal set cordoned off by what could be Soviet-era caution tape confines the four members of the Theatre of the Eighth Day troupe in The Files, an epistolary play made up of text adapted from the actors’ personal correspondence and, most intriguingly, from the notes kept on them by the police during Poland’s Communist regime.


Reviewed by Meg van Huygen

After opening with a black-and-white animated history (Terry Gilliam-style), the actors—playing themselves from the 1970s—take us chronologically through the events that comprise their oppression-defying oeuvre. The actors’ old letters to one another are read in charmingly accented English; “authority” voices and dark glasses are adopted for the official communiqués penned by the government spies attempting to infiltrate the troupe. A lot of humor comes from the actors’ double-takes as they hear themselves described from the police’s point of view. At one point, the codenames of the spies are read by all four actors simultaneously, in a strange, poem-like drone, evoking the strange anthems of Cold War's art-suppressing decades. The only woman in the troupe, Ewa Wojciak, suggests the “mother computer” of a thousand dystopian films. Curious to note are the actors’ huge smiles throughout, as they change from “Ah, we were so young!” laughs to bittersweet grins of regret.

We’re used to films and documentaries covering this period by presenting the gray, bleak world of Communist rule, so we’re unprepared for the humorous excerpts from the Theater of the Eighth Day’s contemporary work performed throughout. Moments of chaotic clowning are punctuated with sudden violence and silly verse by the three male members (and with particular hilarity and gravity by Tadeusz Janiszewski).

The Files is nothing more than four people sitting in front of microphones, reading 40-year-old government telegrams. But as they get you on their wavelength, a compelling mental picture forms of young, fearless artists who rebel not with IEDs or flaming cocktails but with thoughts, ideals, art, and sometimes nonsense. The play ends very effectively with Wojciak singing in Polish along with a projection of her 19-year-old self. Now, Wojciak is overcome by emotion halfway through, but her past voice continues to sing on in a clear, brave voice that no government document could censor, temper, or still.

The Files is performed weekly at the 59E59 Theaters as part of Made In Poland: A Festival of New Polish Plays, which runs through November 30th.

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The Files (1 hour, 20 minutes; no intermission)
59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, Manhattan)
Tickets: $25
Performances: October 22nd - November 9th

Two Rooms

Two Rooms explores the emotional trauma that ensues after an American is held hostage in Lebanon and his wife suffers in his absence, as the United States' government refuses to negotiate with his terrorists. But in New York's post-9/11 era, timing is still everything.



Reviewed by Meg van Huygen

Originally produced in 1988, Pulitzer nominee Lee Blessing's Two Rooms seems once again relevant, telling the perhaps-forgotten story of another terrorist conflict in the Middle East: Lebanon. Michael, an American teacher, has been held hostage by terrorists in Beirut for over a year; his wife, Lainie, agonizes at home, nursing her anger toward the government for doing so little for her husband. More specifically, Two Rooms tells the stories of the character's rooms: Michael's cell, where he sits blindfolded, and his home office, where Lainie keeps vigil for him. Imprisoned, Michael narrates his unwritten letters home between beatings, musing on what he would give for a window or to know what day it is. Back in the U.S., Lainie is harangued for interviews by both Walker, a charismatic news reporter, and Ellen, an icy, buttoned-down member of the State Department.

The rooms are constructed to show contrast, and though you would expect the torture cell to be a violent place, it is in fact the office that sees the most action. In attempting to deliver this, Angela Christian as Lainie can be a little much. It's nice that she respects her character's anguish so deeply, but her translation of Lainie's fiery, take-no-lip persona often comes off as shrill and caricatured. By the time Christian breaks down and shows Lainie’s vulnerability, we’re not sympathetic—we’re annoyed it took so long to get there. In sharp contrast, Michael Laurence, as a man dehumanized by torture, registers as human with his serene, almost defeated demeanor. It’s as though the unfamiliarity of the settings focuses his familiar humanity. Sadly and calmly, he makes us yearn along with him for the quiet office that Lainie shows us does not exist.

The dialogue is mostly political, of course, and gets dry early on, leaving director Patrick Flynn to try to enliven the simple two-rooms-in-one set. Patrick Boll as the reporter, Walker, helps with this—his interpretation of the role to be a possible seducer as well as interrogator opens up a sneaky romantic thread. As well, projected images of Lebanese women and children projected on the wall are a neat multimedia touch.

Two Rooms has been produced several times since the towers fell, and it’s no mystery why. But each new production cheapens the play: our concepts of the region and who terrorists are have changed since 1988; the words hostage and Middle East do not automatically make Two Rooms a better play, any more than a shirt becomes more useful when it has SpongeBob on it. Two Rooms may have once delivered the poignancy to which this cast aspires, but the more we learn about the reality of the Middle East, the more this production seems—like Michael—to be bouncing impossible wishes off the unresponsive walls of a windowless cell.