American Lives Theatre's 'Spay' probes ongoing epidemic of drug dependency

There is no final chapter in addiction stories, "Spay" teaches us. When physiology and psychology join arms and march ahead through vulnerable lives, the forces of reason, morality, and love faint and pull their flags out of any ground in which they have tentatively planted stakes.

"Spay" opened this weekend in an American Lives Theatre production on Phoenix Theatre's Basile stage. The last line (from offstage) in this expansive, troubling one-act drama by Madison Fiedler is succeeded by a final blackout. On Saturday night, the audience seemed a bit startled into silence until the lights came back up on a curtain-call-arranged cast. I think the playwright, as well Jen Johansen, making her directorial debut, were hinting "That's it!" as well as 'No, this is not it!"

It's conventional by now that many modern plays avoid clearcut resolution. In the case of "Spay," the central problem of substance abuse bakes in the need to foresee that any shred of hope might vanish in the future lives we imagine for its characters. The title hints at a wrenching decision the play's addict, a young woman named Noah, has made, but planning and promises are notably as thin as hope in the real lives of such people. Their lives are threaded throughout our own. Favorable resolution is often a pipe dream.

Noah tries to wrap her brain around her dilemma.

It's hard to resist finding symbolism in the central character's name, which of course is historically male as well as belonging to one of Western culture's central representatives of survival and continuity. Jaddy Ciucci plays Noah with a ferocious combination of neediness and resentment, overpowered by illness. She is crucially unlikely to avoid drowning in the flood. She has not built an ark.  

Living under the specter of no self-control with intermittent attempts at rescue by her well-controlled sister, Harper, she hangs on to a marginalized, ungoverned life. Her young son Benny is under Harper's guardianship, and Noah's flickering maternal devotion seems impossible to sustain. Noah remains under the ill-advised spell of her drug dealer boyfriend, Jackson (played with desperation and cunning by Matt Kraft), who is also struggling to find purpose and a reliable hold on life in a drab small town in West Virginia.

In one of the play's few scenes of relaxation between the sisters, we learn that Harper and Noah are offspring of different fathers by the same mother. That settled my mind after wondering if Shawnté Gaston's portrayal of Harper was an instance of colorblind casting. But the playwright indeed calls for a biracial actor to play Harper, which adds a certain sociological zing to the play's central conflict.

Super-responsible Harper ponders Aubrey's advice.

We hear often that American lives are all about race, but "Spay" makes little use of Harper's racial difference. Where it does lies in the initial response of the fourth character, a nongovernmental social worker named Aubrey, when Harper answers her knock at the door. Aubrey has read about Noah's publicized public meltdown, yet asks if Harper is Noah. 

In today's age of digital information about everybody, it seems odd that question has to be asked. But it's a touch of the unconscious racism Aubrey brings to her task, guessing that a black woman answering the door might well be the drug addict she's come to help, despite Harper's having none of the signs that Aubrey is trained to recognize. My guess is that the playwright enjoys the irony. 

Fiedler also seems to have taken pleasure in making Aubrey the show's chief explainer. Much of what she has to say will surely be pertinent to the Phoenix's free "Trail Talk," this one on the opioid crisis, scheduled for  6 p.m. June 25. The play runs through June 30. 

Fortunately, the playwright also fleshes out the character with the pathos of Aubrey's having suffered the death by overdose of her daughter. That has put her pitch of out-of-town assistance on a solid footing, and her awkwardness at first — this is her initial assignment in the field — vanishes as she becomes emotionally and professionally involved in Noah's case. 

The performances have a rattling intensity. The tension builds up quickly in this production. The actors step on the heels of each other's lines, which works well. We quickly come to know that Harper, Noah, and Jackson are loyal to deeply personal agendas that resist welcoming other perspectives. There is lying and manipulation at work, with rhetorical overdrive to spare. No wonder they interrupt each other.

 I found immediate engagement with the story because of the overlapping rush of lines; sorting it all out would come later. With Julie Dixon's Aubrey in the mix, the climactic, barred-door argument that she, Jackson, and Harper carry on with Noah, who's locked herself in the bedroom where her son sleeps, takes on the life-and-death dimensions  of  America's opioid epidemic. 

Sadly, that's a story with many blocked paths to resolution. In "Spay," we need to be satisfied with the mere glimmer of something better. Both the glimmer and the barriers are substantially represented in this show, which is well designed and performed in all respects.

[Photos by Indy Ghost Light]