WET Gets God's Ear, Talks Up a Storm

Across the country, there are an enormous amount of young couples with two kids. And the younger of those two kids is called "insurance."

That abiding anxiety is what playwright Jenny Schwartz drags into the light with God's Ear (at WET through November 10, tickets $10-$18), a play in which the terrible has happened, a drowning, and a couple, Mel and Ted, have to negotiate the aftermath. Any play is largely about people talking, and Schwartz heightens that verbal intensity by zooming in on stock phrases that take the place of communication, that act "as if" something were being said.

On the one hand, the play isn't overly concerned with realism--Mel (Mary Bliss Mather) has what amounts to an aria of strung-together tritenesses that she offers her husband when he's finally there in person. Ted (Michael Place) is a business traveler who makes "So, how're you doing?" calls from the road, only he asks, with jokey indirection, how the dog is doing. (Schwartz dwells on the repetition of stock phrases almost fondly, like steps taken with little verbal crutches.) The irony that a second child doesn't insure against this kind of emotional battering is underscored when Mel is left alone with her daughter Lanie (Mikano Fukaya), with whom she's not as close as with her son.

On the other hand, the absurd disconnect is a real function of grief. Etta Lilienthal's set--an ingeniously telescoping view--captures both a sense of distance and magnified introspection, while Ben Zamora's lighting design evokes brilliant emotional colors that contrast with the flat affect of Mel and Ted's pretense of "getting on with life."

You might think all this angst and grief would be three-hankie material, but director Roger Benington keeps things lively, and the characters show little self-pity. Also, there are hallucinatory appearances by the Tooth Fairy and G.I. Joe, along with Ted's run-ins with a transvestite airline attendant (Brendan Toner) and a gloriously off-the-rails barfly (Libby Matthews). Matthews makes the most of a plum role, and treads a brilliantly fine line between the recitation of Schwartz's lines for their wit, and still inhabiting a character that lives and breathes...and drinks like a fish.

Mary Bliss Mather in God's Ear at Washington Ensemble Theatre. Photo by Victoria Lahti.