ARTS . Art

The Lizard Kings

Tweaked and polished, Pig Iron's Obie-winner comes home to roost.


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Published: Dec 8, 2009

SIGN LANGUAGE: The award-winning incarnation of <i>Chekhov Lizardbrain</i>, starring James Sugg as Dmitri, clarifies plot points without losing its

Pig Iron Theatre Co

SIGN LANGUAGE: The award-winning incarnation of Chekhov Lizardbrain, starring James Sugg as Dmitri, clarifies plot points without losing its "great unknown-ness."

[ theater ]

When the Ohio Theatre in Manhattan presented Chekhov Lizardbrain in 2008 and its lead, James Sugg, walked away with an Obie Award, Philadelphia's bells went off. This city has long supported Philly's harbinger of the avant-garde, Pig Iron Theatre Co. — so how come it took an off-off-Broadway production to win them such acclaim? And what's so different about NYC's Lizardbrain than the quirky version — about painfully solitary botanist Dmitri, who longs to connect with the world around him — we first saw in 2007?

"Pig Iron's very familiar with an audience almost getting our work," says Sugg during rehearsals for this month's revamped production of writer Robert Quillen "Quill" Camp's Chekhov Lizardbrain, the version New Yorkers saw. "After the first incarnation, Quill and Dan [Rothenberg, Pig Iron's co-artistic director] saw an opportunity to have our cake and eat it, too."

There were some strong opinions, says Rothenberg, about what to change for Lizardbrain's New York debut. "In the end, Camp and I decided we were keeping our cards too close to our vest, and that there was a way to make the story clearer that would actually let people relax into the associative world of Dmitri's brain." Rothenberg admits he's always been reluctant to give audiences too many signposts. "But in this play it turned out that 'what is happening' was so preposterous and intriguing that laying it out more clearly didn't mean sacrificing any of the great unknown-ness that's attached to the metaphorical life of the play."

In a sense, Rothenberg, Sugg, Camp and actors Quinn Bauriedel, Geoff Sobelle and Dito van Reigersberg are continually looking for Lizardbrain's emotional caramel center. During the play's first run, notes Sugg, inspiration came from Anton Chekhov's most off-kilter characters, as well as the writings of Temple Grandin, whose books on autism fascinated the Pigs. "We latch onto things as they're crafted in the rehearsal room," says Sugg. "There are always moments of clarity and curiosity to serve as lights amidst the rest of the crap."

Rothenberg adds that while Lizardbrain never gave its central character a firm autism diagnosis, Dmitri is based on people James knows, secret parts of James himself, socially awkward Solyony from Chekhov's Three Sisters and even an autistic blogger named Silent Meow. "Dmitri's not a poster child for autism; he's somewhere on that spectrum," says Rothenberg, whose own interest in mental health drives him to essay the subject. "It's my own feeling that other people's minds are such terrifyingly unknowable black boxes. That's a pretty whacked-out thing for a theater director to feel, right? But maybe that's why I'm making theater — to keep trying to figure out why on Earth the humans do what they do and think what they think and miss what they miss."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Dec. 10-13, $25-$30, Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St., 215-873-0883, pigiron.org.