Theatre in Review: Tribes (Barrow Street Theatre)

Nina Raine is far better known in London than New York, although I suspect that is about to change, for she has one of the greatest gifts a playwright can have: She can take what looks like a familiar situation and, through the careful application of telling details, scramble our expectations so thoroughly that she leaves us breathless, anxious to know what's going to happen next.

Take the example of Tribes; at first glance, it looks like the plot of one of those uplifting cable channel movies featuring an afflicted hero or heroine and a supporting cast of ex-sitcom stars tearing up on cue, just before each commercial break. The plot centers on a young deaf man who falls in love for the first time, rattling his overprotective family. Cue the hugs and sobs, right?

Wrong. Raine has a bracingly unsentimental mind and an ability to see all sides of a situation. In Tribes, a handicap does not confer sainthood, and love is always, always a mixed blessing. Her protagonist, Billy, lives somewhere in England, cared for by his family. And what a family: Christopher, the father, is a retired academic, the author of many provocative books, and a professional bully who hones his teasing skills on the members of his family. Daniel, Billy's's brother, is a graduate student with a grudge against Christopher, and Ruth, his sister, an opera singer of sorts, is equally free with her opinions; both them, well into their 20s, also live at home. Their mother, Beth, is an aspiring novelist and the house referee, a skill that is definitely needed, because the family exists is a state of perpetual battle by banter. Christopher savages Daniel's writing skills; Daniel trashes Ruth's vocal abilities; Ruth brings up the tender topic of Daniel's's ex-girlfriend. Then, just as it looks as if peace will reign, at least for a moment, Christopher starts in on Beth's manuscript, setting off a major row all over the house. At one point, Beth wields a BB gun, and really, given her loved ones, can you blame her?

It's Raine's insight that squabbling is the glue that holds the family together. It's their lingua franca, their backwards way of showing affection for each other. Even as each new verbal ballistic missile is launched -- say, when Christopher dismisses someone as having "all the charisma of a bus shelter" -- you can see each of them savoring it, both for its destructive possibilities and because it frees them to provide even more outrageous responses. "Abusive love is all that's on offer here," someone says, with rare accuracy. Billy isn't a regular participant in the family mayhem. Because of his deafness, and possibly because he isn't temperamentally suited to this kind of verbal warfare, he is the family's Switzerland, a quiet onlooker who is loved unreservedly by all.

Exactly what Billy thinks of this situation isn't made clear, but everything changes when, at a party, he meets and falls in love with a young woman named Sylvia. As opposed to Billy, who has been profoundly, if not totally, deaf from birth, Sylvia, the child of two deaf parents, is only now losing her hearing. (Raine cleverly illustrates their different experiences of deafness through their methods of communication. Billy, who has been kept away from other deaf people, reads lips with remarkable accuracy; Sylvia, who spent her life immersed in the world of the deaf, is a whiz at sign language.) Sylvia, who naturally is unhappy about the encroaching loss of her hearing, is ambivalent about becoming part of a deaf community that is more like stifling small town, where, among other things, "everyone has slept with everyone else." Billy, who has missed out on the life of a hearing person, she notes, is like "a cradle Catholic, rather than a convert."

Billy introduces Sylvia to his family at a dinner that moves rapidly toward disaster. For the first time, we see them through Sylvia's eyes, as she struggles to keep up with their rapid-fire sniping, and we begin to understand exactly what Billy has been living with for years. Sylvia also shows the ability to give as good as she gets, making clear that she considers Christopher an unprincipled bully, and fat, to boot. (To Christopher, the whole notion of a deaf community is a fraud perpetrated by the politically correct; he calls the deaf "the fucking Muslims of the handicapped world.") By then, we have learned other, more disillusioning facts. Daniel suffers from a mental illness -- apparently a mild form of schizophrenia, complete with voices in his head -- leaving him cripplingly dependent on Billy. Ruth is revealed to be a dilettante, lacking the talent and skill for a proper career. Indeed, Billy proves to be far more resilient than his hearing siblings.

And, intoxicated by a new feeling of solidarity with his deaf brothers and sisters, Billy swiftly, savagely turns his back on his family. In the play's most riveting scene, Billy, refusing to speak, delivers his indictment of them in sign language, which Sylvia, not entirely happy with the task, must interpret to them in words. (In his most bruising comment, he dismisses them as "conventionally unconventional," delivering a fatal wound to the family mythology.) This brings him a kind of euphoria, but happiness remains elusive. Because of their differing attitudes about deafness, Billy's romance with Sylvia swiftly crumbles; there's more trouble when, having gotten a job lip-reading video tapes for the police, he goes too far to prove himself.

In the hands of the wrong director, the full complexity of Tribes -- its caustic wit, complex characters, and deep, if unsentimental, feeling -- might not be so vividly on display. Fortunately, David Cromer, the right man for the job, has obtained intensively detailed and emotionally rich work from his cast, establishing the insular world of Billy's family, which is surprisingly deaf to any outside reality. The deaf actor Russell Harvard shines as Billy, showing his joy in loving Sylvia and revealing in stunning fashion his long-held-back rage against his loved ones. Will Brill's Daniel is a convincingly fragile creature, constructed out of nerve endings. Jeff Parry's Christopher never loses his hold on our sympathies, even when he is most grievously on the attack. Susan Pourfar's Sylvia is an engagingly complicated young woman, dismayed by her deafness and exceptionally clear-eyed about the downsides of life among those with hearing and those without. Gayle Rankin's Ruth is charming even when facing up to the fact that she is very possibly one of life's losers. And Mare Winningham brings her natural warmth to Beth, who sees what is happening to her family and feels powerless to stop it.

A sense of intimacy, which is central to the play's success, is supported by Scott Pask's nicely detailed set design, which places the audience on all four sides of a living room/kitchen setting dominated by a large skylight. Keith Parham's lighting provides an unusually varied set of time-of-day looks; his work is so precisely calibrated that a couple of scenes are played successfully in what appears to be the light from only two on-stage lamps. Jeff Sugg's projections, aimed at various locations on the set, provide the dialogue at those moments when sign language is being used. Tristan Raines' costumes feel perfectly appropriate to each character. Daniel Kluger's sound design is most effective when using a kind of white noise effect to signal the experience of deafness. ("Nobody told me it was going to be this noisy, going deaf," says Sylvia, in an unguarded moment.)

It's not surprising that the finale of Tribes is so open-ended, leaving you wondering what will happen next, for Raine has constructed a marvelously knotty drama, one that resists simple classifications and pat wrap-ups. It's not a perfect work. The second act takes too many leaps -- Billy's decision to reject his family comes all too rapidly, for example -- and, with so much going on, it's not surprising that there are more than a few loose ends. But Raine is gifted with a playwright's knack for dramatic structure and a novelist's eye for important details. It's a formidable combination.--David Barbour