Get Out Today: Tragedy, a tragedy @ the Little Theatre

About halfway in to Will Eno's Tragedy, a tragedy (2 p.m. April 5, $12), we began to suspect the playwright was suffering from insomnia. There's a dark, plastic, wandering nature to the play that signals a mind on the edge of--but kept from--sleep. Depending on how recently you've been afraid of the dark, you'll be right back there, hearing your breath, your heartbeat, and strange noises, and the night will seem like a suffocating cold, black ocean, everything and everyone you know a small flicker that is guttering out.

The play doles out bits of biting comedy to keep you on the path: a character says as a child he was given a dictionary and made his way through it thinking it was the "sad, confusing story of everything." If the story has nowhere all that surprising to go, it's not fatal--its power is like a ghost story's. It chills in order to warn, and to warm.

Eno drops a local TV news team into a brooding abyss when the sun sets one evening, and everyone somehow realizes it's never coming back up. It's a terrific concept because while it's easy to chortle at their attempts to "cover" unending night--yes, dogs are still barking, the governor has a statement, and a family may or may not be returning home--the news team is us, our daylight selves, freshly scrubbed and full of can-do optimism, professionals ready to make sense of things.

The Satori Group's production is anchored by Frank in the Studio (Alex Matthews, visibly shouldering the weight of his concerned gravitas), John in the Field (Anthony Darnell, playing the Action Jim Forman role), Constance at the Home (a stay-pressed, brittle Lindsey Valitchka), and Michael, the Legal Advisor (Spike Friedman, offering bearded analysis, occasionally en espanol).

Set design by Andrew Lazarow and Clare Strasser evokes a Dick van Dyke-era TV studio, and in Monty Taylor's busy lighting design, spotlights fly about the stage like a restless mind, as the team gradually loses their shit on camera.

Adam Standley and Caitlin Sullivan co-direct the play, and we applaud their work--the whole play is the news team reporting and kicking it back to the studio, and Eno worrying away with linguistic legerdemain and pratfalls, and yet the play walks its attention-holding tightrope. Even when the Witness (a surprising mousy-to-radiant turn by Adrienne Clark) steps forth with an earnest Moral, it isn't tedious, but simply a reassuring sign that the lights are about to come back up.