The Thin Place, at ACT

I’m often the first to clap. Most of the time, it is really easy to know when a play has ended. Sometimes, it’s a little less clear. Many of those times, it’s me who starts the applause as I sense the end. This happened just recently at Hotter than Egypt at ACT. It ends, as I recall, with one character peering out across the Nile into a hopeful future. I knew that was it. 

Not so tonight. Again at ACT, I saw The Thin Place. It was obvious when it was nearing the end. Then there’s a blackout. Then one of the characters walks back on stage. It seemed like the end. It would be a good place to put the end, I thought. But in the context of the play, there maybe could have been a final monologue from that character, maybe even a whole scene. Then a second character comes out. Again, I wondered if there would be more story. Then the final two actors appear and it’s clear to everyone that this is the curtain call. Show’s over. We all clapped. 

Thinking about it, this fit the theme of the show: how can we tell what is real.

Linda is a medium. She puts people in touch with dead loved ones to facilitate healing and closure. It brings joy, brings people back to life you might say, not the dead, but the living. She is proud of this work, even though she calls it a trick. She doesn’t think she is really channeling the dead but she knows the work matters and is important. 

Hilda is a person looking to be brought back. She has lost her beloved grandmother and also her own mother, with whom the relationship had become difficult near the end. Mother and grandmother are gone, but also inescapable. This is because, as Hilda tells us, there is a very thin place between the apparent world around us and the one we go to when we leave it.

The Thin Place begins with Hilda telling her story, addressing the audience directly. She talks about herself and her grandmother and how she tries very hard to listen, to hear her through that thin membrane between the worlds. Then she tells us about Linda. The telling then fades out in favor of showing as Hilda interacts with Linda and later, two other characters. The narration comes back at times so Hilda can fill us in on the action. 

This interactive element is crucial to the success of the play. There is a sort of bookend of Hilda identifying someone in the audience who reminds her so, so much of her grandmother. She returns to that person near the end, to powerful effect. By the final scene, Hilda tells us she is unsure which side of the thin place she might be on. So, to begin where we started, she and I shared the question: is it over? And how do we know?