Theatre in Review: This Much I Know (59E59)

	Firdous Bamji, Ethan J. Miller. Photo: Carol Rosegg

This Much I Know begins with Lukesh, a psychology professor with a specialty in cognition, lecturing about the many ways, accurate and not, we process information -- or, as he puts it, "This is how we move through the world we make sense of things, even things there's no sense to be made of." He has plenty of material to work with. His wife, Natalya, flees their marriage without explanation, running off to Russia to unearth the truth behind her great-grandparents' deaths. Lukesh is approached by Harold, a student recently outed as the son of a Christian Nationalist leader, seeking an advisor for his thesis on H. G. Wells; the Anglo-Indian academic is soon tussling with the young man about the benefits of racial separation. Meanwhile, playwright Jonathan Spector, employing a time machine of his own, takes us back to the 1960s, introducing Svetlana Stalin, aka Svetlana Alliluyeva, aka Lana Peters, best-selling author, serial spouse, and, possibly, cagey keeper of her father's secrets. What links these storylines? Does anything? And what about the two auto accidents - or are they? -- embedded in the plot? One of Spector's minor characters, an elderly alcoholic former apparatchik, is fond of vast jigsaw puzzles. So is the playwright.

From the get-go, everybody in This Much I Know grabs at truths that, all too often, crumble at the touch. Natalya is rattled at her participation in a fatal crash that, all agree, wasn't her fault: Still, she is tormented to think any number of trivial choices might have averted disaster. Meanwhile, her search for the truth about her ancestors, Soviet Jews possibly murdered by Stalin, sends her down an ever-deepening rabbit hole of rumor and speculation. Back on campus, Harold, raised by radical rightists yet attending a liberal university, struggles to link The Time Machine to theories of eugenics and racial purity, even as Lukesh's probing questions challenge everything he has been raised to believe. When not sparring with Harold, Lukesh is wracked with guilt, fearing that lecturing Natalya rather than comforting her may have permanently driven her away. Her occasional enigmatic texts provide the coldest of comfort.

All this only scratches the surface of a narrative chockablock with twists, reversals, family secrets, mirror-image incidents, and actions taken with the best of intentions that have stunningly unpredictable consequences. The plot features two interracial marriages, two automotive deaths, and two children grappling with toxic inheritances from their ideologue fathers. One of them recants, unwittingly inciting a violent act; the other maintains a Mona Lisa smile, adding, enigmatically, "The less you know, the more certain you are." In this play, ain't that the truth.

Suffice to say that This Much I Know is a veritable supermarket of ideas, not unlike one of Tom Stoppard's intellectual extravaganzas, with Spector, last season's Tony winner for Eureka Day, emerging from the current crop of playwrights as the brains of the organization. Just as Eureka Day seemed ripped from the headlines, This Much I Know has volumes to say to us living in a world shaped by conspiracy theories, fake news, and confirmation bias. "This is why false ideas can be dangerous," Lukesh says. "They're sticky. We are so desperate to make things connect."

In a production from Washington, DC's Theater J, director Hayley Finn confidently weaves Spector's many plot threads, bolstering his argument about the perils of seeking meaning where, all appearances to the contrary, none exists. Finn deploys a trio of extraordinarily adept actors: As Lukesh, Firdous Bamji, a fine utility player in many New York productions, presides over the action with considerable wit and grace even as he fights to save his marriage. This may be his career-best performance to date. He is assisted by two fresh faces best known in the DC theatre community: Dani Stoller is equally arresting as Natalya, struggling with the competing concepts of causation and responsibility, and as Svetlana, maneuvered by history into an untenable position and keeping her own counsel as a matter of survival. Ethan J. Miller's Harold, caught between competing worldviews, is the nicest white supremacist you've ever met, a true innocent painfully processing facts that undermine his intellectual faith. He is also effective as a poker-faced Soviet bureaucrat and the vodka-soaked old coot who may (or may not) have the answers to Natalya's questions.

The design team has found an effective way of wrangling this sprawling tale. Misha Kachman's classroom set gains in size when backlit, aided by a retractable platform that allows for quick scenic transitions. The upstage wall is a fine surface for Mona Kasra's projections of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, babies, chessboards, and Russian vistas. (The creepy animated portraits of Stalin and Harold's father are an especially effective touch, as is the montage of paintings giving a riotously outsized account of Stalin's role in history.) Colin K. Bills' lighting reconfigures the space seamlessly, using sidelight to create alluring tableaux. Sarah O'Halloran's sound design includes some urgent musical passages relying heavily on strings. Danielle Preston's costumes allow the actors to switch roles in a second or less.

To be sure, This Much I Know has its faults: Harold's plot trails off without a definitive conclusion, for example, and the scenes in which Lukesh incorporates his marital problems into his syllabus can feel strained. Nevertheless, this is a most stimulating event, the work of a playwright with real ambitions and the skills to realize them. On this point, we will brook no argument. --David Barbour