Psychologist Kurt Lewin wrote in 1951 that “behavior is a function of person and situation.” That pretty much sums up the dramatic conceit of Alan M. Berks’ Almost Exactly Like Us, now playing at the Workshop Theater, presented by Theatre of the Expendable, an organization dedicated to develop plays about people who have been given up on or who have given up on themselves. To help patrons not give up on theater, they keep their ticket prices about the same as going to a movie. It’s not exactly clear which characters in the play are expendable, but more on that later.
The play follows four people through three different worlds, or “alternate universes,” as they love to say. First we see 19 year-old Zoe. She is approached by the older Michael, a professor. We discover they are living in an unnamed totalitarian regime, which sounds like a cross between Chechnya and The Sudan. Both characters are Americans, who speak patronizingly of the locals, because they don’t speak proper English. But one wonders why they continue to live in a place where they obviously harbor so much animosity towards its citizens. They begin a relationship, which may or may not be love. Later on, it seems one or both of them are spies. Or are they just naïve? What is clear is that they are both hiding something. We learn that Michael is a mathematics expert sent by the American government on a project, and perhaps Zoe is collaborating with the locals. Also nearby is Anders, brother of Michael’s dead wife, who was killed by terrorists. Anders channels his grief by passing out leaflets for Christian meetings.
Scene (or Reality) Two opens at a fundamentalist Christian college, where professor Michael approaches freshman Zoe, and she keeps saying they must have met somewhere. “Do you believe in alternative realities?” she asks him. Zoe shows up at Michael’s house, swearing she knows him, that they had a relationship. None of this sits well with Michael’s wife, Helen, who already seems like she’s on the verge of a depressive collapse. Helen’s brother, Anders, is an aimless student at the university. Interestingly, Anders is the fundamentalist in Scene One, while Michael takes that role in Scene Two, though this shift is less understandable in terms of situational changes.
The final Scene takes place in a situation familiar to anyone who’s seen all the Armageddon movies when there are only a few people left on the planet. In this case it’s Zoe and Anders, whose mistrust of everything around them threatens both their lives.
Berks’ script does a good job of asking the question of how much of our behavior is determined by the situation we are in. You can see the similarities of underlying characteristics. For example, Michael’s denial is sublimated through doing some work he feels is important (helping the US government and later keeping students on the True Christian path), however subversive or controlling that may be. Zoe shows up as clueless, but then we see she is more aware than she lets on. However there were times when the dialogue was just too explicit. “They aren’t like us. They aren’t like us at all,” gets repeated and we are meant to see that those people are, well, not like us. “The Truth” gets bandied about a lot. Someone said it, someone did not, another person seeks it. Do we need to hear it so precisely?
The actors were wonderful, well-directed by Jesse Edward Rosbrow. Most haunting was Julie Fitzpatrick as Helen, whose helplessness, hopelessness and emotional incarceration is captured in her listless body language and hollow eyes. Timothy Fannon shows the preppy and proper sense of denial that rules Michael’s life, while Seth Austin as Anders helps us see the blankness of his characters, and Anna O’Donoghue’s Zoe morphs easily from innocent-like waif to girl-of-the-world.
Elisha Shaefer’s set evokes the stark emotions of the play and Victoria Miller’s lighting supports this. Costumes by Lauren Gaston fit the characters perfectly. Sound design, though, was troublesome. What was meant to be, it seems, background noise of a foreign market was more annoying than anything else. Between Act I and Act II was this perpetual digital organ bell that sounded like someone forgot to turn off the equipment. And in between scenes was a male voice speaking some inaudible words in repetition. Maybe there was a deeper meaning, that is, that no one really understands anything, but hard to know.
Now back to the earlier question. So, which characters are expendable? The fundamentalists? Not to the Tea Partiers. The spies and collaborators? Not to the FBI and CIA. Or maybe the housewife? Tell that to the hordes of thirty-something female bloggers. What they might be trying to say is that some of the characters, particularly Helen and perhaps Anders, have given up on themselves.
Forget about those concerns. Almost Exactly Like Us is a provocative chance to explore characters from several perspectives. As a cross between Isaac Asimov and the movie Sliding Doors, the play will likely stay with you for days as you turn scenes around in your mind. What is truth, what is loyalty, how do you deal with loss and whom do you trust—these are questions the play asks. Only you can answer.

Theatre of the Expendable
WorkShop Theater
312 West 36th Street,
April 22-24 and April 27-30 at 8pm
April 25 & May 1 at 3pm
Tickets ($12) are available
online at www.theatermania.com < http://www.theatermania.com >
or by calling 212-352-3101.