Next Act's "Three Viewings" Focuses on Twisted Tales of Love and Death
There is, inarguably, something monumental to celebrate as Next Act opens its first in-person production since the pandemic began in March, 2020. But instead of a leap for joy that audiences can once again gather to enjoy live theater, Next Act’s production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s Three Viewings feels like a quiet, slow, on-ramp back to “normal life” that is still very much under construction.
Directed by Edward Morgan and featuring Next Act favorites Cassandra Bissell, Carrie Hitchcock, and the organization’s artistic director David Cecsarini, Three Viewings is a compact evening of three monologues that are very loosely related. Set in a funeral parlor in a small, Midwestern town where everyone knows everyone else, three broken people come to wrestle with their feelings about the recently deceased. There is love bordering on obsession, revenge covering up staggering grief, and the revelation that sometimes we don’t really know our own spouse until after they are gone. It’s an unsettling set of confessions that occasionally shock, but don’t quite gel as chapters in a bigger story. Expertly performed and produced, Three Viewings isn’t the bold, theatrical show we want to see, but it will tide audiences over until next time.
The evening begins with Emil (Cecsarini) whispering “I love you,” to an unseen paramour, who doesn’t yet know of his deep longing for her. The owner of the funeral home, he appears initially as a romantic soul living a life of quiet desperation. Obsessed with every detail of Tessie, a local realtor who he subtly pairs with the families of the departed that might be looking to unload a property, Emil’s passion grows with every brief encounter. A touch of her hand sends him to ecstatic heights. But much like Emil’s profession, which shows off the beautiful side of corpses while hiding the ugliness, there is much more to this man than disappointed love — there is an inability to live in the world as it is.
Director Morgan does a nice job separating this first monologue into beats, giving the actor pauses and some logical stage business to break up months of pining, inaction, and fantasy. And Cecsarini plays the mortician with just the right combination of emotion, stuttering hesitation and eventual perversity. His repeated declarations of love that sound so earnest and innocent in the opening moments are a haunting refrain after he reveals more about his thwarted desires at the end of the piece.
Cassandra Bissell as Mac in Three Viewings.
Next up is Mac (Bissell), a good girl gone bad who is full of sharp edges. Determined to shake off her former life, she has fled her home for a wild life in California, surviving as a jewelry thief who literally preys on the dead. Dressed to look more dangerous than she is, in red boots and black leather, she tells a story that vacillates from morally dubious, to macabre, to mean-spirited tragedy. While her mission of revenge against a grandmother who cheated her out of a prize when she was a child seems puzzling and disproportionate for much of the play, it is eventually revealed that what Mac wants more than anything is for her life to be fair. Promises should be kept. There should be no accidental casualties. And the fact that her own misguided actions took the lives of innocent victims is something she cannot reconcile now.
Bissell handles the character’s many layers with aplomb — peeling back just what she wants us to see, while trying to protect herself from more hurt. Her pacing as she unspools the tale is spot on, as is her movement from flippant annoyance to heartbreak as she repeatedly explains that her husband is not accompanying her on this trip because he forgot to finish a household chore. Morgan moves Bissell around the set once again to great effect, as she travels cross country and through different points in time.
Carrie Hitchcock as Virginia in Three Viewings.
In contrast, the final tale of the night is strange and sweet. Milwaukee favorite Carrie Hitchcock sits, imobile through her monologue, recounting the surprising discoveries about her late husband’s finances. To her shock and horror, he left her with monetary entanglements with the bank, the family, and the mob that add up to millions. As entertaining as it is to watch her discover a secret side of her husband, it is even more delightful hearing Hitchcock describe how skillfully her beloved unties all these knots from beyond the grave.
A consummate storyteller, she easily captures the imagination as she recalls moments from early life, her friends, and the array of suits and thugs that badger her to pay back the loans her deceased husband took out in a panic to try to save his business.
The set and lighting, both designed by Jason Fassl, work marvelously together. The plain, gray playing levels and generic furniture stand in effortlessly for many settings, while giving the actors a lot of options for movement within a small footprint. Brilliantly lit curtain panels just behind the set change the mood radically and easily. A huge upgrade from the single chair of many monologue evenings, the simple set depicts the small world that the characters inhabit — whether they are paralyzed, barely contained, or drawn back to their tiny town.
At 30 minutes each, the collection of stories feels like a full evening of theater, even in a house that is less than half full due to COVID measures. But while they are individually interesting, they don’t add up to a satisfying whole. Loosely linked by location and the broad themes of love and death, the script takes snapshots of three lives, but fails to paint a full portrait. Hopefully Next Act’s next show will focus more on interaction and less on exposition.