Edna works alongside the lovable Wilson (Emmanuel Genard ’10) as an assistant for a rich family. The two characters answer to Beth (Claire Sullivan ’11), the painfully upbeat head of the family household and self-proclaimed “lion tamer,” whom they both despise. In order to come to terms with the death of her brother, Buddy (Eric Swartz ’11), Edna becomes obsessed with sleeping with writers. We follow her as she frolics with writers Jake, Blake and Drake (Michael Muller ’11), who, like her brother once did, make a living by putting words on paper. When Edna is able to separate herself physically from her mental pain, she is able to see that someone, Wilson, has been writing about her all along.
The staging of the show is conducive to the double-nature of its content, in which serious situations are made humorously bizarre. The stage is set as the doubly functional pantry-office of the assistants. The room houses cleaning products, cereal boxes and plungers for the family, as well as computers and office equipment for its employees. As the action flashes in and out of Edna’s mind, an office closet opens to reveal Buddy, Edna’s dead brother, in a bathtub. Although the shift into Edna’s mind is jarring at first, the use of light and scenery as a means of transferring from present action to Edna’s mental interior makes mental abstraction concrete for audiences. As this transfer occurs, and the lighting narrows to frame the bathtub in Edna’s apartment, we are able to see the relationship (between her and her brother) that has affected every other relationship in her life.
Each actor’s performance works to make the combination of quirky humor and intensity in Madeline pop. Skeist, whose work in the production is part of the fulfillment of senior honors, crafts Edna as a self-loathing young woman who has concealed her loneliness with sarcasm and anger. She can grip the audience in a moment of panic, writhing and shrieking hopelessly on the ground while at the same time drawing laughs, insisting that her stare is a depression-riddled “default face.” Genard turns in a delightful performance as Wilson, who likes “sounds,” especially those of airplanes and office equipment. Aside from his impressive copy-machine impersonations, Genard arms Wilson with a sense of purity and honesty that is not present in any of the other characters.
Beth, who prefaces her speeches with “I am going to say something,” has the attitude of a condescending kindergarten teacher. Sullivan makes her obliviousness cringe-worthy. She is obsessed with perfection, right down to folding her napkin, and treats the people around her like robots, asking them to “confirm or deny” each issue at hand. Throughout the show, Sullivan gives Beth a beautifully nuanced depth. Despite the character’s blatant absurdity, she allows her to show signs of vulnerability, as Beth tries, in her own way, to show Edna that she understands what it is like to be trapped in “the darkness.”
Muller plays the fittingly named Jake, Blake and Drake, three somewhat disturbed writers that Edna “befriends.” Each scene in which Edna interacts with one of these characters is illuminated by Muller’s energy. That energy is harnessed to form three distinct personalities, the most colorful of which is the “jive talking” Blake. Eric Swartz gives Buddy, Edna’s brother who lives in her head, a powerful intensity. He shares his sister’s sarcastic disposition, despising mindless conversations and useless people, specifically secretaries. Swartz rattles the room towards the end of the play with a declaration for Edna to move on from her grief. The speech takes him out of the bathtub and moves Edna to cleanse herself of her demons.
By combining dark themes of depression, dirtiness and loneliness with the trivial problems of contemporary society, such as what to do when one cannot rely on Google or Handi-Wipes, “The Mistakes Madeline Made” carves itself into a unique and incredibly entertaining realm of performance art.