Margin Notes: Fog and Filthy Air

Fog and Filthy Air

Seen on: Thursday, 3/20/25.

Robert Homeyer as Father. Photo by Peter Welch.

Plot and Background

Theater For the New City presents Tom Diriwachter's new play, inspired by true events, about Tim, a playwright working as a waiter in a restaurant, who travels by bus to Memphis in the middle of the night to rescue his parents, staying in a purgatorial motel and unable to drive themselves home.

What I Knew Beforehand

That it was about a family in crisis.

Thoughts:

Play: It's hard, with plays based on real events, to decide how faithful you must stay to reality, and when you are allowed to take liberties. This play ultimately feels like its intent is an apology and a tribute to Tim's (playwright Tom Diriwachter's stand-in) parents, flawed as they are. In the play itself he is frustrated with them, frustrated with their inability to take his writing seriously or to communicate with him frankly. But when Tim himself is offstage the audience sees the deep love his parents have for each other, the way his mother protects her husband from the creeping frailty of his own faculties. The play then is Tom/Tim apologizing for not seeing that at the time, but recognizing it now, decades later. However, beyond that, I don't know what the play itself is actually about. Its focus drifts, as well as its conviction as to whether what we're even seeing is real or not. The poster image includes a line from the show invoking "the Devil's eyes" haunting the father as he drove; the characters repeatedly refer to the motel room as Hell (though to me it reads more as a purgatory, with a very Godot/Dumb Waiter energy of wondering if the characters can actually leave), and I wonder if the playwright hoped for the play to leave the literal into some bizarre otherspace where perhaps all three characters are dead and the story is about them accepting that truth. But maybe it really is just about a father having a nervous breakdown, and his wife and adult son gently helping him collect himself enough to go home.

Cast: While I believe the actors have a sense of who their characters are, I unfortunately don't have the sense that their family dynamic is a lived-in relationship. There's too little genuine need among the three of them to actually reach and communicate with the others. There's too much looking down, looking away, hiding their eyes not just from each other but from the audience and our ability to engage with their emotional journey. Engaging more fully with each other, with the history of their family dynamic, would also help with the rhythm and pacing of the performance. And if they were staged so they weren't always standing on the same plane, this too would help with their ability to connect.

Design: Evan Frank's scenic design perfectly captures the seediness of those roadside motels with hourly rates--from the wall-mounted headboards to the stiff coverlets to the questionably stained carpeting. Additionally, the placement of a large box TV, glass ashtrays, a corded phone, and even the characters' luggage tell us that we're firmly in the 1990s--or even earlier, since motels like these feel frozen in time (though the character themselves confirm the setting is 1996 or 1997). There is no credited costume designer, so I won't harp on this, but it did bother me that there was less attention paid to what time period the characters' clothing read as. Alexander Bartenieff's lighting design and Roy Chang's sound design get less room to play, but effectively shape the seedy space, as well as slip us into the trance-like mentality of the monologue moments.

***

Running: Now playing at Theater for the New City - Opening: March 6, 2025. Closing: March 23, 2025.
Category: play
Length: 1 hour, 30 minutes, no intermission.

Creative Team

Playwright: Tom Diriwachter
Director: Jonathan Weber
Designers:  Evan Frank (Set), Alexander Bartenieff (Lighting), Roy Chang (Sound),  Sara Gierc (Production Stage Manager), Paul Siebold, OFF OFF PR (Publicity), Peter Welch (Photos and Graphic Design).
Cast: Robert Homeyer, Kate A. McGrath, Steve Gamble.

Kate A. McGrath, Steve Gamble, and Robert Homeyer as Mother, Tim and
Father. Photo by Peter Welch.