If drugs and booze were once the high-octane fuel of drama, these days it’s recovery and sobriety that are inspiring playwrights. The latest contributor to this ever-expanding body of work is Jacob Perkins, whose frustratingly obfuscating “The Dinosaurs” opened on Monday at Playwrights Horizons.
The director Les Waters somehow manages to summon an almost eerie vibe that stands in stark contrast to Perkins’s relatively naturalistic script, which incorporates such familiar markers of 12-step meetings as a Serenity Prayer, references to anniversaries and chitchat about baked goods. But that almost otherworldly ambience feels gratuitous rather than indicative of any, ahem, greater design.
Early in the show, the set’s featureless space is assembled by the actors, and a familiar room emerges: folding chairs arranged in a semicircle, pastries and boxed coffee to one side. (The dots collective handled the scenic design, which appears to have heavily relied on a trip to Lowe’s.) The small talk suggests people who have known one another for a while and have a degree of intimacy.
Quickly we get the confirmation that we are, indeed, at a support-group meeting, more specifically one that goes by Saturday Survivors. The women and trans-inclusive members have alcoholism in common, and share stories and testimonies that are basically self-contained arias for the actors — the production benefits from an overqualified cast that includes Kathleen Chalfant, Elizabeth Marvel and April Matthis.
This framing device is straightforward, but the play coyly sows doubts and questions. Janet (Mallory Portnoy) tells a tale that has the off-kilter bent of a “Twin Peaks” scene, for example, and it quickly becomes apparent that all the characters’ names start with J — Joane (Maria Elena Ramirez) even mentions a son named Jimmy.
The one exception is Rayna (Keilly McQuail), who goes by Buddy and is seen interacting with Jane (Matthis). Rayna pops up early, a newbie to the group; despite Jane’s quiet welcome, she stammers, “I think I’m actually in the wrong room?” and exits in a rush, perhaps not yet ready for her life to change.
Rayna/Buddy reappears a little later while the rest of the group is lost in meditation, though her conversation with Jane informs us that we are at a different gathering from the one we started with. Joan (Marvel) announcing her various sobriety anniversaries also indicates that the story takes place over a long span.
“The Dinosaurs” suggests not just the passage of time, but also that change is possible (Rayna and Joan are the most obvious barometers of that), which is the point of sobriety, after all. But, tellingly, a conspicuously placed wall clock never changes, its hands glaringly frozen in position. This implies stasis, being stuck in place, and perhaps that being sober is always in the present because you take it one day at a time. Mixing those two realities could have been interesting, but as with the characters’ intriguing J names and surreal, brief monologues, Perkins doesn’t make anything of it.
Good theater does not require tidy endings and neat explanations, but audiences do need the sense that a show is trying to say something.
“The Dinosaurs” is not dissimilar to last year’s “Grief Camp” (also directed by Waters) in that both are about people dealing with difficult situations — trauma in the earlier production, addiction here — and neither engages with the particulars of what gnaws at the characters, what they overcame and who they are now. In the case of “The Dinosaurs,” we end up with a show entirely made of buildup that does not bother with a payoff, like a magic trick that’s all misdirection and no rabbit.
The Dinosaurs Through March 1 at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes.
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