Review: NIGHTINGALE at Atwater Village Theatre

NIGHTINGALE is a subtle descent into harrowing madness brought to blistering life in a star turn by Lance A. Williams. Based on the acclaimed 2015 HBO television film of the same name, the script by Frederick Mensch is an almost-one-man show that takes place entirely within one house where Peter Snowden (Williams), an Army veteran, lives with his mother in Chicago. Peter’s father left decades ago and Peter himself is now floundering, half-heartedly working a dead-end job at a grocery store and squabbling with his off-stage mother. The only thing really energizing him to focus is a quest to reunite with a former buddy, Edward, a man he knows from his time in the military. These things all conspire in his mind to thwart him and Peter finds anyone to blame but himself as he starts to lose his grip on reality.

The project seems ideally suited for the stage, considering its contained story, and Brandon Mendez Homer adeptly adapts it to the Atwater’s space with clever staging and tight direction. Fortunately, the area he has to play in is large, and he makes use of all of it. With the audience on opposing sides of the stage, Williams has the floor at the center of the room all to himself, which he utilizes liberally, shouting and dancing and jumping and swearing and exulting, rushing in and out with new props as needed, addressing us, the audience, each side in turn under menacing red lights. Upholstered chairs and sofas interspersed with the audience make the story even more intimate, as he is often literally among us, asking for our help, pleading his case to us, addressing us as if we are complicit in his machinations. And in some ways we are, as our society has forsaken many a veteran once they’ve come home.

Adapting his own material, Mensch’s script is multilayered and moves at lightning pace, surprisingly so considering there is just the one actor. It is by turns stark, humorous, shocking, and devastating, revealing truths and realities obliquely but with the power of blunt force. Lighting and sound designer Matt Richter brings Peter’s story to evocative and dramatic life, stark and shadowy and menacing, while videos periodically projected on a wall give understated and dreamlike depth to his backstory.

It’s a stellar production, but none of it would land without Williams’ central performance. Carrying 99% of the show, he plumbs complexity from a role that is already rife with complexity. Peter is fractured from life experiences and there has been no support system to help heal him. Dealing with it all on his own could lead to melodrama, histrionics, but Williams keeps it grounded, which makes it all the more searing in its relatability. He strips himself bare and allows us to peer inside a splintering psyche of a man, who, at his core, is simply looking for the love that has been denied him. It’s an illuminating performance told with compassion and intimacy.

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