Everybody doesn’t hurt

 Everybody, the play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins didn’t work for me when I saw it produced by Strawberry Theatre Workshop in 2019. I saw it again the other day, this time produced by UW School of Drama. That one didn't work for me either. 

The intent is to have you think about what you would say to Saint Peter when you arrive at the pearly gates. Basically anyway. The UW Drama program explains the play is based on 15th century European stories, which in turn are based on earlier stories from the Buddhist tradition, further east. 


The lead character, Everybody, is told by Death he is about to die and will have to give an accounting of his life and face final judgment. There is a negotiation. Death allows him to bring someone or something with him to defend the thesis that he lived a good enough life.


Note: I have used he/him pronouns above because the actor playing everybody was male-presenting but the cast is randomized each night, so it could be a different actor in any given performance. 


Friendship is willing to back Everybody, until it finds out they also have to die to go on the journey. Same with Kinship. Everybody appeals to the Stuff accumulated over a lifetime to be a reflection of the life lived. Nope. Can’t take it with you. Same with the other characters, Mind, Five Senses, Understanding and others. The only one agreeing to go through the veil with Everybody is Love, presumably the love he generated and shared and the good that came from that. Centuries ago, the character was named Good Deeds, bringing us back to my Saint Peter analogy. 


I don’t think it is the fault of either of the productions that the show didn’t work for me. Though it could be. 


As I recall, the Strawshop production gave the show a sort of Our Town quality. I had a sense that the action was being narrated to me, in a laid back, knowing manner, which put distance between me and the material.


The UW Drama production was the opposite. There was exuberance, energy, daring even – but also an overall sense of comic irony. That also put distance between me and the theme, which, afterall, is death and what do you do about it. 


In addition to the randomized casting among the five main actors, the script contains theatrical not-exactly-tricks but things designed to get you feeling Everybody is you, or just like you, or you could be the one called to account. While Death is monologuing, a spotlight falls on a person in the audience and they are invited on to the stage. It becomes apparent they are one of the five. The other four follow in the same way. In the end, instead of thinking it could have been me, it was like seeing how the magician really “disappeared.” 


Later, toward the end, the audience is invited up to dance while a DJ plays LCD Soundsystem, Michael Jackson, and Icona Pop. I went. It was fun. But it didn't get me closer to really identifying with Everybody, that Everybody is me. It was a dance break. 


But I love theatricality. So, why didn’t these things work? 


Theater has you feel things, often things it had no idea you would or could feel. This week, I also saw a collection of short plays, Ten to Places, produced by Heart Repertory Theatre in Woodinville. In one, a character asks another to think of the best day of their life. A day in my life popped up, vivid and real. I’m still processing what it means that that day, of all days, was the one. I wasn’t directed or instructed to think of it. I just did. 


I didn’t feel any such things, on the topic or off in either Everybody. Maybe it’s because they did not lean in hard enough to the theme. 


The centuries-old DNA of Everybody does not really want you to react or feel however or whatever. It grew out of a morality play, an art form that wants to tell you exactly what to think. Neither Strawshop nor UW took that on. There was all of that theatrical, narrative, comic, ironic distance. No hard edge. 


Maybe it’s not possible given the text of this adaptation, but I would like to see a production that fully took on the didactic, lecturing quality that the originals no doubt had. Perhaps even add an accusatory, hectoring edge, some guilt tripping. Nothing played for laughs. 


Would such a thing work in the twenty-first century USA when no one you know is really afraid of any final judgment or hellfire? Could people really be made to feel they are in dire danger, and had better take a hard look, right now, at the way they are living, before it’s too late? I don’t know. But I’d like to see an attempt. 


Everybody, produced by Strawberry Theatre Workshop played from January 17 to February 17, 2019 at 12th Ave Arts. You can read about that production here: 

https://www.strawshop.org/page/2019-everybody#cast-and-crew 


Everybody ended its run on May 31, 2026. You can read about that show here:

https://drama.washington.edu/events/2026-05-21/everybody  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jersey Boys: dudes rocked

Image
Something happened.  It was transcendent. Lorenzo Pugliese as Frankie Valli was singing the big number, Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You. “I love you baby!” he sang. The crowd – and it was a crowd at that point, not a theatrical audience – was in a frenzy.  Time and space were bending. Individual identities became fluid. This was not Mr. Pugliese in front of me. It was the real Frankie Valli. This was not the Village Theater in Everett. This was, like, the Sands Casino in Las Vegas in nineteen-sixty-whatever.  Pugliese/Valli came down the stairs at stage left and worked his way along the front row. I’m not kidding. It was like he was someone else. It was like the crowd were all someone else. I was someone else, somewhere else. We all floated there. Together.  Later in the show, when The Four Seasons are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tommy DeVito, one of the group, says,  “Listen, fellas. I wanna tell you something. This is the greatest award you...
Read more

American Buffalo in Marysville

Image
If you've taken an acting class, you might have done an Uta Hagen exercise requiring you to perform a two-minute slice of life.  Just you, on stage, silently doing something you might do on an ordinary day.  Maybe you're ironing.  Maybe you're making a sandwich.  The point is for the audience to see you acting naturally.  It's not as easy as it sounds. American Buffalo , now playing at Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts in Marysville starts out with an Uta Hagen exercise, basically.  Scott B. Randall plays Donny Dubrow, the owner of a junk store.  Before the house lights even fade down, Donny comes on stage and begins doing what he might do on any typical morning.  He has his coffee cup in hand.  He straightens up this. He looks at that.  He takes a small trash can out into the alleyway and empties it.  He goes out the front door to get the morning newspaper.  It's engrossing to watch all the things he does and guess or c...
Read more

Phoebe in Winter by Strawshop has questions

Image
  My quick reaction to PHOEBE IN WINTER Produced by Strawberry Theatre Workshop Written by Jen Silverman Directed by Kate Drummond The Concord Theatricals blurb of the play says, “When three brothers return home from a distant war, they prepare to settle into their old lives. But … a war that was once far away now threatens to reignite inside their home.” This is not the first piece of media to explore “the war comes home.” When it does in this play, it’s dark, it’s comic and it’s darkly comic. It starts to feel like a poem. There are these short, sharp stanza-scenes. The language is heightened, as the emotion is. Each of them ends with a flourish, a wow moment. I literally said “wow” out loud at least once (I’m that guy.) The meaning and implications go in many directions and you’re not sure where, but you get swept up in the excitement and energy generated. About two-thirds of the way through, there is a shift. Maybe, to mix metaphors, it’s like a new movement of a symphony, a ne...
Read more