The Doors, by local theater artists Jack Holloway and Joe Winskye, is a not very interesting play on a very interesting subject: the American paranoia about terrorists since 9/11. If a play could be judged solely by its theme, this Hat Trick Theatre production would win lots of prizes for timeliness and good sense. But satisfying plays provide more: suspenseful action, three-dimensional characters and inventive dialogue, for starters. Even more to the point, successful plays keep sending new information our way every few minutes: new conflicts, dilemmas, encounters, ideas.
The Doors, on the other hand, begins with one perfectly workable premise — that our concern about security has reached absurd levels — and works it to death over two tedious hours. Watching six cartoon-like characters prepare for a home invasion that will never come — and that we know will never come — just isn't very entertaining or illuminating. Sure, there's lots of internecine strife among the unbesieged: they repetitively (and redundantly) suspect each other of the worst, and hardly a quarter-hour goes by when someone doesn't assault an apparent ally. But activity doesn't equal action, and it's just exasperating to experience so many variations on a single joke. Gentlemen, you made your point by minute ten: now what else have you got to say?
The play begins when a man named Quentin attacks an Arabic-looking woman whom he assumes is a terrorist. In the next scene, Quentin is gone, and we meet his younger brother Arnold and Arnold's fiancée Grace, a reporter. Arnold has come to this house, with its scores of doors (ten of which we see), because Quentin, whom he thought dead, has called out of the blue and asked for a meeting. When Quentin returns — and after his obligatory failure to recognize Arnold — we learn the details of this military man's story. He wasn't killed in action, as Arnold believed, but was captured by some murkily-explained bad guys, and imprisoned for a decade. Free again, he's convinced that ruthless killers are out to murder him, and he's committed to killing them first (the War on Terror, get it?).
Quentin, Arnold and Grace are soon joined by professional bodyguards Mr. Paige, Ms. Cutter and Mr. Stone. There are more mistaken identities, and there's some moderately funny business about the business of selling security. People run in and out of doors for no good reason, there's gunplay and knifeplay and the endlessly repeated warning that it's not safe to leave the premises. The most genuinely comical moment occurs when one character has her revenge on the careerist security agents by checking "Needs Improvement" on their Quality Control questionnaire. So there are laughs here, however few.
Happily, though, the acting is consistently good. The best of a strong lot is Steve Fisher as Quentin: he's clearly been damaged by his experience in captivity, and he's so anxious and suspicious, you wish he had a well-written thriller to act in. Co-author Holloway also plays Quentin's brother Arnold, and though he's not given much opportunity to show his capacious talent, still he blends his confusion and misunderstanding with likable good humor. As security expert Mr. Paige, Jonathan Cho gives one of his best performances, appearing oh-so-punctilious, and April Bender as the knife-wielding Ms. Cutter is as blithely two-dimensional as the script asks her to be. The other performers — Liz Sinclair as Grace, Soolaf Rasheid as the Stranger and Robb Brown as Mr. Stone — turn in tolerable if not outstanding work. Perhaps the best thing in the production is Kristin Kochanik's impressive set, a door-happy room more attractive than any other I've seen in the Silver Meteor Gallery. Joe Winskye's direction is another plus: if he can keep the action moving when there's so little really happening, imagine what he can do with a genuinely inventive farce.
And The Doors wants to be farce. Problem is, it lacks certain essentials: genuine suspense, something real at stake, the threat of dreadfully embarrassing encounters. Still, the play's co-authors clearly have talent — there are occasions of real comedy and invention in these two acts. They also work for a theater — Hat Trick — which is notoriously open to experimentation. This show may not be a winner; but I wouldn't count Holloway and Winskye out. If I'm right, they'll be back. And the next show, or the next, will be the success this one aimed for.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2009.