Theatre in Review: And Then We Were No More (La MaMa) If you ever need someone to inject some blood into a faltering play, Elizabeth Marvel is your woman. Cast in And Then We Were No More as a lawyer reluctantly taking a capital punishment case -- the time is the foreseeable future, when America lives under a kind of rule by algorithm -- she finds, for the first time in years, a meaningful voice and a reason for being. Her client, a murderess who poisoned her children, husband, and mother, is sentenced to die via a supposedly pain-free form of execution, although, as Marvel notes, how can one know? The convicted are vaporized, leaving not even a stitch of clothing behind. Marvel is told that her client wishes to "change the manner" of her death, but, upon meeting the accused, played with unsettling intensity by Elizabeth Yeoman, whose dialogue is rendered in a broken syntax suggestive of irreparable brain damage, Marvel insists on a counterargument: Yeoman must be allowed to live. (This is one of those plays where the characters all have generic titles like A Lawyer, An Analyst, and An Official, so we'll stick with the actors' real names.) Noting that Yeoman, who was tortured into near-incoherence during her incarceration -- the official Orwellian description is "the harvesting of physical data, again under full disclosure to all appropriate department" -- has been frustrated in her suicide attempts, Marvel denounces Yeoman's captors as essentially incoherent: Having repeatedly denied her the ultimate release in the past, why do they insist on it now? It's a meaty argument and Marvel pursues it with the restrained fury of someone fed to the teeth with the official evasions and hypocrisies on which the case is founded. Standing stock still, ramrod-straight in her posture, facing the audience, she electrifies us with close reasoning and carefully chosen words, getting at the soul-killing foundations of the "function" that everyone else insists guarantees a smoothly running society. This is one of her strongest recent performances -- controlled, dignified, and informed by a savage scorn -- and it's great to see her in top form. Mark Wing-Davey's production has other powerful moments, including a wrenching walk down what used to be known in gangster films as the last mile, a sequence here pulsing with the sheer terror of extermination. Adding to the effect is Reza Behjat's lighting and Henry Nelson and Will Curry's sound design, which add to the aura of impending, if entirely spotless, doom. But playwright Tim Blake Nelson has cornered himself with a technical problem that proves all but insurmountable. It has two aspects: First, plays about the dystopian future lose some of their force when one lives in the dystopian present; compared to the raucous, venomous, violent America of today, Blake's hellscape feels oddly restful. Also, even if we are racing toward a dictatorship ruled by artificial intelligence, in which the combination of all-encompassing data and predictive algorithms has done away with the need for human agency ("I was relieved to learn that I voted last month," Marvel notes in a bitingly amusing aside), it makes for dull theatre. This is not the squalid Oceana of Orwell's 1984, with its grimy apartments, cheap cigarettes and booze, and undertone of paranoia. Nor is it Huxley's Brave New World, with its caste system, pacifying drugs, and "feelies," sensorially enhanced films that alarmingly resemble the 4DX experiences at modern cinemas. (If anything, it evokes Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, where criminal behavior at least hints at a sense of moral choice.) Such totalitarian regimes have some color and drama built into them; Nelson's vision of a stifling banality too often infects the air at La MaMa. His characters speak in measured (not to say stilted) paragraphs larded with euphemisms, never raising their voices. They live in cities where conflict is unknown, and crime has largely ceased to exist. They dress in black and grays and express little or no desire for much of anything; the overall tranquility is enough to put one to sleep. This makes matters especially difficult for Scott Shepherd, a fine actor here defeated by the bland editorializing of his character, a faceless bureaucrat, especially in his sterile debate with Marvel, about the relation of mankind to nature, which opens the play. It certainly doesn't help Jennifer Mogbock, who, as a corporate mandarin behind the creation of the execution machine, is forced to play A Woman of Mystery, spouting one enigmatic statement after another. Leave it to Henry Stram, who finds something almost beatific in the role of a mechanic who has devoted his life to the system in the rapturous belief that humanity is being perfected, "and now our very consciousness [is] out there in divine fabrication." Adding to the trouble is a second act that rehashes the Act I nature debate; throws in some murky, ill-explained political developments; and climaxes in a twist that is both predictable and oddly unconvincing. If Wing-Davey's direction seems almost allergic to sensationalizing the text, he lets his designers juice things up. In addition to those previously mentioned, David Meyer's set, defined by enormous vertical and horizontal tubing, is as forbidding as anyone can wish. Despite working with a severely restrained color palette, Marina Draghici's costumes are smartly cut, constituting a good example of understated fascist chic. Blake is such an intelligent writer, and his purpose is so serious that it is no fun to report that And Then We Were No More is often hobbled by a stiff, lecturing tone. (Even that title seems to drip with forced significance.) Thanks be to Marvel, however, who, in each of her scenes, virtually defibrillates the play with her passion and power. --David Barbour 
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