Theatre in Review: Gidion's Knot (59E59)

	Karen Leiner and Dara O'Brien. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Gidion's Knot centers around the parent-teacher conference nobody ever wants to have: Corryn, the mother of the title character, shows up at his classroom, ready to keep her appointment with Heather, his teacher. Heather is baffled, having forgotten entirely about the meeting; this isn't entirely negligent on her part, as she assumed the meeting had been cancelled. Gidion, you see, has killed himself. He was in the fifth grade.

Then again, Gidion's Knot centers on a parent-teacher conference like no other. Consider the facts: Gidion was sent home with a letter of suspension and a request for a meeting with Corryn. Since his suicide -- an event that has rattled the student body -- apparently no one from the school has tried to contact Corryn, either to express sympathy, explain its position, or even to suggest that the original conference was off. It seems rather strange that Corryn's sole response has been to show up for the appointment without calling in advance. It beggars belief that Heather would go ahead with the meeting without the participation of the school's principal, who is summoned from her home but never materializes. We eventually learn that the principal is avoiding Corryn for fear of legal action. I hate to tell her, but at this point, Corryn has grounds for a whale of a suit.

Anyway, rather than openly confronting Heather about the events that may have led up to Gidion's suicide -- in addition to being suspended, he was beaten up by another student -- Corryn takes part in several minutes of aimless verbal fencing that mostly illustrate the delaying tactics practiced by the playwright, Johnna Adams. Corryn talks about her own career as a professor of poetry, medieval and earlier, at Northwestern; she offers a bit of a poem by the Scottish-Gaelic bard Ossian, adding, for the benefit of the nonplussed Heather, "Fighting and fucking. That's all anybody really writes about." (Apropos of nothing, one of Gidion's friends is a girl named Seneca, presumably after the Roman author of blood-soaked tragedies.)

The revelation of Corryn's career is relevant because we learn that the cause of Gidion's suspension is a story he wrote, a violent fantasia in which many of his teachers and classmates are brutally tortured and killed. Heather reads the document out loud -- it sounds like a young adult version of American Psycho -- and having to listen to it is a brutalizing experience. Corryn only notices the mellifluous style, praises it as "magnificent," and, further advancing her argument, reminds Heather that, centuries later, people are still reading and talking about the Marquis de Sade -- this is surely the strangest ambition any mother ever had for her 11-year-old, but Gidion's Knot never really takes the time to examine that.

You might wonder why Gidion would be afraid to discuss the reason for his suspension with such a doting mother, but other factors are raised, however sketchily, that suggest that the boy was aware he wasn't really the poet-warrior Corryn hoped she was raising, but in the end, Gidion's Knot isn't really about Gidion at all. Adams appears to be interested mostly in contrasting Heather -- a lonely middle-aged single woman who is interested chiefly in protecting her young charges from any disturbing influence -- with Corryn, who believes in individuality at any price and damn the consequences. Even on this level, however, Gidion's Knot is more an exchange of bullet points rather than a real drama. Corryn never stops to wonder if she has the tiniest bit of responsibility for her son's unhappiness, and Heather never backs down from her determinedly maternal stance. At times, you have to wonder about the author's priorities; none of these crucial issues are addressed, but there is plenty of time to linger over Heather's grief for her dying cat.

Even when it is incredible and bordering on irritating, however, Gidion's Knot remains oddly watchable, thanks to Karen Leiner (Corryn) and Dara O'Brien (Heather), who offer performances of such intensity that they frequently burn through the play's contrivances. Under the direction of Austin Pendleton, they make the most of the script's verbal battles and even more of the many silences that punctuate their colloquy, filling the air with unspoken emotions that maintain a crackling level of conflict. Thanks to them, you may not realize until close to the end of the play's short 80-minute running time that it has no satisfying resolution to offer.

The rest of the production is also fine. Working in 59E59's tiny Theatre C, the set designer, Stephen Karoly Dobay, distills a thoroughly evocative classroom out of a few key elements. Ryan Metzler's lighting and Ryan Rumery's sound design -- which suggests the life of the school outside the room -- are both fine. Kathleen Doyle's costumes -- Heather's skirt-and-sweater ensemble and Corryn's leather jacket and jeans -- are revelatory of each character.

But it's impossible to see Gidion's Knot as anything other than a frustrating work that has no time for exploring its characters and which raises important issues only to have little to say about them. While one doesn't doubt Adams' seriousness of purpose, her use of such plot points as school bullying and a preadolescent's violent fantasies ultimately feels exploitative. Even in fiction, the death of a child deserves more thoughtful treatment than this.--David Barbour