Off the Deep End

O Yes I Will doesn't.

by Mark Cofta

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Published: Mar 11, 2008

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Answer: A joke without a punchline.

Question: What's more satisfying than O Yes I Will (I will remember the spirit and texture of this conversation)?

Yes, all that is the title of Deb Margolin's monologue, performed for Gas & Electric Arts by Michelle Horman with silent assistance from Joseph Ritsch, a peculiarly shallow exercise.

The premise intrigues: A woman is told after surgery that when she received anesthesia, she talked for 12 minutes without stopping. Margolin's unwieldy title consists of her last words before succumbing, in response to a doctor explaining that she wouldn't remember any of this. I imagined deep truths emerging, a soulful speaking in tongues like the poetic accounts of near-death experiences — a glimpse at what Thornton Wilder called "the something way deep down that's eternal about every human being."

Instead, we're treated to a lecture about theater ("We go to imagine ourselves in other bodies" — gee, thanks for explaining that) and, to encourage us to empathize, the character refers to herself as "we," not "I," which just feels pretentious.

Pronouns do not a play make: Not only don't we share in her experience, we never learn what it was. Though doctors witnessed her 12-minute rant, she presents five different hypothetical "versions," vague guesses with similar "texture and spirit" that aren't particularly insightful or memorable. One isn't even spoken — though the one established "fact" is that she talked a blue streak. Did you ever wonder where that old cliché comes from? I wondered about that, and many other things, as this 70-minute play meandered to an ending.

Well, no, not an ending. After the five versions, the performance stops. The first four are variations on the idea that she would rather not have surgery. The fifth implies that she's OK with it, and we're left with the impression that the unconscious mind isn't the pool's deep end after all: Mind and soul flail pitifully in the shallows.

Horman makes this character occasionally likable; designers James Clotfelter (lights), Dirk Durossette (set) and Millie Hiibel (costumes) create an eerie institutional coolness; and director Lisa Jo Epstein's staging is economical and fluid, but their efforts can't inflate this flaccid kiddie pool.

O Yes I Will Through March 16, Gas & Electric Arts, The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-407-0556, gasandelectricarts.org.

 

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