Sound Design
Anatomy of a Suicide is a fugue play. For most of Alice Birch’s gorgeously incisive, elegantly devastating look at the legacy of severe depression across generations, there are three stories unfolding at once; their themes, words and characters overlap and strike off one another in counterpoint. On stage right of Mariana Sanchez’s spacious, minimalist set is Carol (Carla Gugino), a housewife in what seems like the late 1960s; when we meet her, she has just slit her wrists. Anna (Celeste Arias), in the middle, lives about 30 years years later, and is introduced to us as a willowy heroin addict in the hospital after sustaining a hand injury she can barely feel; a parallel begins to emerge. Meanwhile, on stage left and a few more decades down the line, a fisherwoman named Jo (Jo Mei) is getting stitched up by a doctor after stabbing her palm. But it is her doctor, Bonnie (Gabby Beans), who turns out to be the main character in this third of the narrative—just one of many small twists that Birch introduces in this difficult and rewarding drama.
The structure of the play is disorienting, at times even overwhelming. But Lileana Blain-Cruz’s direction provides clarity amid the cloud of pain. The production is exquisitely timed and calibrated, from the precision of the actors’ coordinated dialogue to the brief thaws of Jiyou Chang’s glacial lighting and the eeriness of Rucyl’s sound.
- Time Out Theater Review by Adam Feldman
The structure of the play is disorienting, at times even overwhelming. But Lileana Blain-Cruz’s direction provides clarity amid the cloud of pain. The production is exquisitely timed and calibrated, from the precision of the actors’ coordinated dialogue to the brief thaws of Jiyou Chang’s glacial lighting and the eeriness of Rucyl’s sound.
- Time Out Theater Review by Adam Feldman