How do we cope with the trauma of our past? That’s a question that playwright-director Enda Walsh and composer Anna Mullarkey explore in Safe House, an imaginative but exhausting new multimedia song cycle now playing at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse. We meet a troubled young Irishwoman named Grace who’s grappling with a difficult upbringing in the ’80s and ’90s as well as an aimless present where she’s subjected to catcalls from unseen strangers who suggest that she’s a sex worker or perhaps some kind of homeless outcast (“You fuckin’ smell ya know”).
Kate Gilmore plays Grace with a mix of antic abandon and hyper-focused control, particularly when she’s crooning Mullarkey’s enigmatic tunes, which at their best sound like Enya pastiches set to a techno beat. “Waiting for the something, expecting nothing new,” she sings in the cryptic but melodic first number, with the lyrics projected on the back wall of Katie Davenport’s set that’s cluttered with the detritus of objects from various points in Grace’s life.
Walsh is not interested in telling a linear story, or even a straightforward nonlinear one where we’re able to pin down Grace’s circumstances and frame of mind in any concrete way by the final curtain. His focus seems to be on re-creating the garbled state of one very flawed woman’s very flawed memories, using Adam Silverman’s geometric lighting, Helen Atkinson’s sound design, and especially Jack Phelan’s videos to create an immersive experience that unfolds a bit like an avant garde indie film. We see video projections of Grace as a little girl, as well as the family that variously welcomed, tolerated, and tormented her — sometimes in the same scene. We see hints of a clan torn asunder by alcoholism and petty resentments.
The overall effect, as Walsh explains in a program note, is to create a “moving scrapbook” whose fractured nature is entirely intentional. “It unfolds as life and memory usually unfold for me,” he writes, “always slightly abstract, ridiculous, strange, wonderful, and oblique.” That’s a noble goal, and there are moments when Gilmore, Walsh and his team create a striking tableau that underscores the larger themes of alienation. But the show’s non-chronological structure makes it impossible to sustain anything approaching narrative momentum, preventing us from fully engaging with our heroine or her plight. (Mullarkey’s score, which grows a bit dirgelike and monotonous as the show progresses, also proves insufficient to engage us through the entire 90-minute running time.)
While Walsh is best known for his Tony-winning musical adaptation of the hit movie “Once,” he’s built much of his reputation on smaller-scale dramas that place befuddled characters like Grace in tightly controlled environments and then watches them squirm and wriggle their way toward something that might resemble escape or freedom. It’s an approach he took to great effect in his 1996 breakout “Disco Pigs” as well as in 2014’s “Ballyturk” (which was staged at St. Ann’s in 2018).
Here, Walsh turns the stagecraft dial to 11 in the service of a story that explores similar ideas but at an even greater emotional distance. We see Grace repeatedly curl herself up in ever-smaller cavities — a wardrobe, an abandoned fridge — in an effort to find a safe space where she can tune out the din of voices shouting at her. Those voices include an inner monologue that offers her little comfort. Gilmore conveys all this conflict with a riveting command of the show’s vocal and physical demands, but Safe House remains too scattershot an exercise in style to move us deeply. ★★☆☆☆
SAFE HOUSE
St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through March 2 (seats range between $49-$74)
Culture Sauce 