Edgar and Annabel by Pony World Theatre


There is a Kurt Vonnegut quote that goes, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”


It’s from the book, Mother Night where the lead character takes on a false identity to go undercover as a spy in Nazi Germany. Eventually, the false identity becomes the real one. 


Pony World Theatre’s Edgar and Annabel, which just closed, turned that on its head. 


The play takes place in a country on the threshold of dystopia. The government is eliminating all opposition. Among their tools is surveillance. They are listening, always listening. When their A.I. hears anomalies in conversation, they move in. 


To thwart this, the opposition has set up safe houses to conduct their activities. They avoid suspicion by scripting everything the occupants say, literally. The most ordinary conversations are written out, from ‘Hi, honey, I’m home,” to, “I’m going to bed.” This allows them to pass secret messages, and to cover for subversive activities, all while seeming normal. 


Enter “Edgar” and “Annabel.” These are the names assumed by Nick and Marianne. On the day I saw it, the roles were played by Dylan Smith and Zenaida Smith, but other actors played the roles throughout the run. 


Marianne plays Annabel perfectly, with script in hand, reading the lines as written. Nick sometimes improvises Edgar a little, angering Marianne and also Miller (James Weidman,) the operative to whom Nick and Mariannne report. 


The couple meet with Miller. Nick thinks the relationship as written is boring. He can’t imagine playing this dull couple indefinitely. There is too much equilibrium. Marianne is focused on the mission and is okay with whatever. Miller agrees to a re-write to put some tension into the relationship. 


This doesn’t work as intended. On the surface, in the scripted lines they read to each other, there is tension. Underneath, in the subtext, Marianne and Nick are falling for each other. This leads to a scene where Edgar is (supposedly) angrily going to bed while the couple start making out on the kitchen floor. 


The personal impacts the political. As Marianne and Nick unravel, the underground is falling apart also. When the couple are unable to become what they pretend to be, the government notices the dissonance, Miller does too. Soon Nick is out, and a new Edgar (Daniel Christensen) is in, reading the exact same “Honey, I’m home,” lines. Outside the safe house, efforts at resistance fail. 


When people remain true to themselves, as fundamentally good people, which Marianne and Nick are, in the theatre, normally that would lead to a triumph and a happy ending. But there is no happy ending in Edgar and Annabel. Things go the other way, in the direction of tragedy, because in the world of this play, in the face of non-stop surveillance and oppression, no one can afford to be who they are. 


(Photo from Pony World website.) 

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