Review: IS THIS A ROOM? at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre

Is This a Room is theater of a sort most people, including me, have never seen. It’s a one-act verbatim play drawn entirely (word-for-word, pause-for-pause, cough-for-cough) from the actual FBI transcript of the 2017 interrogation of Reality Winner, a former Air Force linguist accused of leaking intelligence.

The “documentary play,” created and directed on Broadway by Tina Satter explores an alleged leak by an Air Force veteran and NSA translator Reality Leigh Winner (real birth name) of documents.

The subject of the leak is unknown anyone in the audience who doesn’t lip- read. Words, and eventually entire sentences are redacted via light and sound.

The Milwaukee Chamber Theater production, tightly directed by Executive Artistic Director Brent Hazelton is made all the more potent by the intimate studio theater space and the deceptively uncomplicated performances by Isabelle Muthiah as the vet and Mark Corkins, Rasell Holt and Jonathan Wainwright as the FBI agents.

Wainwright and Holt in particular are pitch perfect in their “good cop” roles. Their friendly demeanors come with a pervasive tense undertone and growing sense of foreboding. Muthiah is sympathetic throughout – a classic, wholesome American girl.

Corkins, brings the greatest sense of threat to Muthiah, but also much of “Room”’s humor. In fact, he acts the question the gives the play its name, remarking on the dank, tiny space in Muthiah’s apartment that served as an interrogation room. There aren’t even chairs, just people circling each other – and the truth – creating more tension,

Milwaukee Chamber’s bold choice is an entirely new, unexpected theater experience.

Caption: Mark Corkins, Rasell Holt, Jonathan Wainwright and Isabelle Muthiah

Photo by Michael Brosilow

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