Imagine a creepier version of Lake Wobegon — perhaps one designed by Harold Pinter. That gives you some idea of the claustrophobic but ultimately uninvolving world of Mary Hamilton’s “We Three,” now at the Side Project under Josh Sobel’s direction.
A young girl has fallen through the ice on the creek in this nameless isolated town. At least, that’s what elderly Grace (Ann James) says. But the body hasn’t been recovered. Dustin (Adam Shalzi), the odd-duck young man who does odd jobs for Grace, has become fascinated with the story — that is, when he’s not trying to woo Daisy (Stevie Chaddock), an employee at a soap store whose mysterious abdominal pains can’t be diagnosed.
The sheriff (Andy Luther) wants to put the mystery of the girl on the ice to rest. His nighttime visits to Grace (who claims she sees the figure of a young girl sitting in “Daddy’s chair,” though whether Daddy is her actual father or a nickname for a deceased spouse isn’t entirely clear) suggest that he wouldn’t mind if Grace were to embroider the story a bit to point suspicion at someone.
If this were a television show like “Twin Peaks,” we would have the benefits of creative editing and cinematography to make the outside world — the isolation, the cold — its own character. In this hyperintimate staging, we only have the interactions of the characters to help us figure out what happened, and more importantly, why we should care about who these people are.
And unhappily, those interactions unfold at mostly the same level of deliberate flat intonation. All the straining for understated menace and the suggestions of supernatural forces in Hamilton’s piece just don’t add up to much more than an exercise in atmosphere. But James’ performance as lonely and seemingly good-hearted Grace (whose humming of “We Three Kings” to keep her fears at bay gives the play its title) is rooted and honest and more than a little sorrowful.
2 STARS
Through Dec. 21, Side Project, 1439 W. Jarvis St., $20 at 773-340-0140 or thesideproject.net
