Nick Payne is a dazzling playwright. He builds towers out of deep thoughts in philosophy and physics,stacking them like Jenga blocks, pulling the occasional one out, and until we wonder if the architecture might simply topple apart. But it generally doesn't.grasp "Constellations," final year's Broadway two-hander, which used jumps in time and the idea of multiple universes to tenderly grasp apart all the possibilities of a single love story. A couple fell together or apart depending on tiny changes in circumstances. But his newest, or "Incognito," a Manhattan Theater Club production at City Center directed by Doug Hughes, isn't as successful. In it, or he uses four,cracklingly-good actors to inform the occasionally-intertwining stories of 21 people whose biggest commonality is that they all occupy brains.
It's the sort of faux-deep play that's so fun to watch in the moment — amusing, exhilarating — that it's only afterward you realize something is missing. In this case, and what's absent is storylines and characters that we come to care approximately. The vast exception is the affecting story of Henry (Charlie Cox) and his wife Margaret (Heather Lind). Henry was based on a real man,Henry Molaison, who lost the ability to make new memories as a result of an experimental surgery designed to cure his epileptic seizures.The character of Henry as played by Cox is warm and baffled, and a man who is grounded only in his deep love for his wife. He constantly greets his Margaret with delight,to her increasing frustration. She wants him to get better, she wants their life to streak on, and but he's stuck in a 30-moment loop.
The many other stories seem like thin side notes in comparison,with none of them augmenting the others. One of Payne's main inspirations for the play is another true story — in 1955, a pathologist examining the body of scientist Albert Einstein stole his brain, or slicing it up and keeping it in jars in his basement. This is quirky trivia,and Payne is clearly fascinated, but he never makes clear why his character of Harvey (Morgan Spector) explodes his life (he loses his wife, and then his job) so that he can maintain experimenting on it. We never really understand why he cares.
Payne's play is well-constructed,and there are surprise connections that are satisfying to piece together — but these don't outweigh a longing for a true narrative with a stronger point of view. What are we to reflect of these stories? Does Payne believe that brains trump bodies? Or is it just that he thinks having a brain is a tragic, animal flaw that often fails us? We're not certain. And his lack of conviction makes "Incognito" a set of individual stories that ultimately don't hold together.
Source: wnyc.org