Entering the performance space, we see the stage has the cozy look of a den: wood paneling, piano, chairs, shelves neatly packed with rows of jars, each containing sheet music and a “brain”. There are four actors: two men and two women. No costume changes, double, triple, quadruple casting. As scenes are played, continuities emerge. Though there are linear plots, they don’t proceed in linear time. Hopscotch. One character is a scientist recovering from a stroke. Another his wife. There’s a neurologist trying to bounce back from a painful divorce. A pathologist who’s studying Einstein’s brain. One character experiments with a lesbian attachment, another investigates Einstein’s progeny.
Written by Nick Payne, Incognito considers recollection, brilliance, reason, scruples, loss, excruciation, the sublime. Initially, the narratives seem to move from the comic, to the ridiculous, to the dark. Sometimes the sublime to the insane. Following variations on a theme, stories cross, converge, crash, run parallel, start over. A devoted wife tries to salvage a glorious marriage, that’s barely started. She must endure incremental attempts to restore her husband’s memory. He doesn’t recognize her, then he does. The pathologist studies Einstein’s brain by dissection, distributing slices into countless jars. A therapist seeking the solace of intimacy, gets drunk to extinguish painful memories, so she can move on.
Payne fuses episodes and elements, keeping details distinct, creating a montage. Memory is a grace, preserving tender, transformative moments, but tormenting us with the traumatic, as well. It’s as if Payne seeks shatter any idealized notions of the brain and mind. Those who dwell the realms of genius might not be spiritually evolved. Saints not intellectual. Does past context enhance a relationship? If we could erase horrible incidents from the mind, should we? In a fugue state, what we say and do never enters conscious memory. In Incognito the forgotten becomes a fugue. Something phenomenal that affects us, but lies just beyond our reach. Payne finds delicacy, frailty, in the midst of chaos that for an instant, gives us a flash of clarity.
Under the sagacious, meticulous guidance of director Alex Organ, the cast (Drew Wall, Natalie Hebert, Thomas Ward, Shannon McGrann) is sublime: focused, agile, thoroughly engaged. Wall brings spontaneity and charisma, Hebert a nuanced, quirky grace. Thomas Ward has an ursine authenticity that is both amusing and poignant and McGrann, intuitive impulses that are truly phenomenal. She has a subtle pathos that will overwhelm you.
Second Thought Theatre presents Incognito, playing January 30th-February 11th, 2019. Bryant Hall, Kalita Humphreys Campus. 3400 Blackburn St., Dallas, Texas 75219. (866) 811-4111. secondthoughttheatre.com