There are numerous settings in which the lines between employment and friendship become blurred, but surely none so acute as the situation that exists between persons with disabilities and those they hire to provide personal assistance.
If you are confined to a wheelchair, it’s likely that a paid caregiver must participate in moments that, for the able-bodied, are entirely private–pulling on pants, say, or holding the showerhead.
Since empathy and salaries are not usually so closely related, there are some complicated issues of power at work here. A disabled person can hire and fire the very person on whom they rely for daily living.
This is the world probed by “No One as Nasty,” the interesting and passionate new play by Susan Nussbaum premiering at the Victory Gardens Theatre under the auspices of the Access Project, a provocative season of studio plays designed to confront and confound expectations about people with disabilities.
Nussbaum, who has a long involvement with this season, has a remarkably clear-eyed sense of these issues.
Her approach, if anything, errs on the side of cynicism rather than sentimentality. And when you add a very slick and fluid production from Susan V. Booth, this show has about as much sweetness as an episode of “The Simpsons.”
It seems like the talented Nussbaum has undergone some autobiographical probing for her character of Janet, an intellectual and forthright wheelchair-bound woman who has enormous difficulty reconciling the multiple levels of her relationship with her caregivers.
The play mainly follows Janet’s complicated encounter with one particular paid helper named Lois (Patricia Pierre-Antoine), a kind but firm African-American woman who has as much trouble locating and respecting boundaries as her employer.
Janet is a rich and complex character who wanders in and out of the audience’s sympathy as Nussbaum doubtless intended. This author has great facility with language and it’s clear that she knows–and is willing to tell–the full measure of the often self-contradictory protagonist.
Actually, there are two Janets on the stage (one played by Lusia Strus and one by Janelle Snow), since Nussbaum chose to split up the character into two halves. Other than the artificial ability to create the possibility of internal monologues, it’s not entirely clear why this choice was made and it rather stacks the deck against everyone else on the stage.
In many ways, this goes to the root of the main problem with the 80-minute play. Most of “No One As Nasty” is concerned with Janet’s internal conflicts and her observations of life.
If this were a novel (and Nussbaum should write one some day), it would be riveting. But to function as a drama, the oppositional characters still need to be better developed and less sketchy.
The lovably raspy Strus and the thoughtful Snow are both terrific. And Booth’s supporting cast does it best with some underwritten parts (Pierre-Antoine is especially admirable in this regard).
Right now, this is one of those fascinating but overly reflexive new works that never quite hits its dramatic center. Nussbaum should do so some rewrites and go for the jugular.
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“No One as Nasty”
When: Through July 2
Where: Victory Gardens Theatre, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: 773-871-0682
