Kyle Cameron plays an apathetic man unable to take control of his life, while Susan Lynskey and Ken King take care of the couple’s often neglected son in Jon Fosse’s Night Sings Its Songs.
Night Sings Its Songs is a rare opportunity to see a play by Jon Fosse, the Norwegian winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. Fosse’s 1997 play is centered on a married couple, named only Young Man and Young Woman. From the outset it’s clear they are having marital difficulties. Young Man (Kyle Cameron) is unhappy and apathetic, while Young Woman (Susan Lynskey) is dissatisfied in her marriage and feeling stuck. They have a baby who periodically cries.
Cameron and Lynskey play a married couple unable to accept how unhappy they make each other.
The husband is a struggling writer who hasn’t been able to get his stories published, even though he has been sending them to publishers without telling his wife. She, in turn, complains that he doesn’t do anything to keep the household going. She’s on maternity leave, and does all the shopping and cleaning, while he sits inside. She complains:
You lie there reading
You don’t go out
You don’t do anything
We don’t have any money
You don’t have any work
We don’t have
anything
An unexpected visit to the couple by the man’s parents—they are The Father and The Mother, and played by Steven Rattazzi and Jenny Allen, respectively—turns out awkward and embarrassing. The Mother notes that the grandchild doesn’t look like anyone in the family. The Father has to be wheedled out of an easy chair to go to the bedroom to look at the baby. A sense of discomfort percolates underneath. Suddenly the parents announce they have to leave to catch a bus, even though the wife had expected them to stay for dinner and perhaps overnight.
Lynskey with King, who plays the lover who finally gives her the opportunity to pursue happiness in her life.
The scene with the parents is full of repetition and a surrealist vibe: Allen’s Mother, for instance, repeats at least seven times that “the bus schedule has changed” and that’s why they have to leave to catch “the last bus,” although the clock on the wall shows it’s 3:30—hardly late enough for a last bus to be departing. (Brian Dudkewiecz’s set has a 1960s aesthetic in its simple sofa, coffee table, chairs and lamps, along with a ticking clock whose time is adjusted through the changing scenes in the play.)
Under the direction of Jerry Hayman, everyone has an odd tone or cadence; they speak in strange sentences with Pinteresque pauses indicated by Fosse’s script; they repeat the same sentences over and over. Most of the time the scenes feel endless, harping on the fact that this apathetic man “never leaves the house,” that “nobody comes over,” that The Wife is unhappy, that he’s unpublished, that they are sad, that he doesn’t pick up the baby.
Unfortunately, the direction is extremely flat, making it unclear where the intentional discomfort starts, and the lack of vision in the directing begins. The repetitions, odd tones, and apathy all cycle to a degree where a viewer becomes frustrated. It is not all the direction’s fault. In similar plays, such repetitions feel like they serve a bigger purpose. In this one it feels like the playwright doesn’t trust the audience to get it.
The last scene introduces Baste (a charismatic Ken King). He’s a friend of the wife, and the husband is immediately suspicious of him. But the overlong scene again rehashes information that has already been aired, with more repetition, as one character refuses to make a decision while the other doesn’t take action. It all culminates in a clichéd conclusion.
Jenny Allen and Steven Rattazzi play the Husband’s strange parents, who really emphasize the unnerving tone of the show. Photographs by Hunter Canning.
The acting, for the most part, doesn’t seem to serve the surreal repetition and odd pauses in the piece. It was not natural enough to help enter the world of the play and not surreal enough to help garner a sense of uneasiness that such plays (like Bertolt Brecht’s and Harold Pinter’s) would need in order to be able to focus on the message.
Lynskey does her best with the character she is given. The Wife is unhappy and frustrated with her home life, but beyond that there is no depth to her character. Cameron fares better only because the text doesn’t give him as many endless monologues about how unhappy he is, but in the end he manages to convey a sense of need and urgency that is immediately undone by 20 more minutes of indecision. King (Baste) manages to bring a sense of fun to the lengthy last scene. Rattazzi comes across as the actor perhaps who understands that the awkward delivery and odd pausing are intentional.
Despite the appeal of the words Nobel Prize, Fosse’s Night Sings Its Songs manages to be boring while being only 70 minutes long. It attempts at capturing a surreal tone but fails at conveying why it’s being used.
The New Light Theater Company production of Night Sings Its Songs runs through March 1 at Theater Row (410 West 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit newlighttheaterproject.com.
Playwright: Jon Fosse
Director: Jerry Heymann
Translation: Sarah Cameron Sunde
Scenic Design: Brian Dudkiewicz
Costumes: Julia Squier
Lighting: Paul Hudson
Sound: Jennie Gorn
