REVIEW: THE INTERNATIONALIST

I have decided to move Anne Washburn to the top of my list of Playwrights to Watch. Back in February, her surreal examination of power and women, The Ladies, gave me enough mental meat to keep me pondering its meanings still. Her latest, The Internationalist, is a similarly thought-provoking study of American values in foreign lands.

Like The Ladies, The Internationalist focuses less on plot and more on ideas. Lowell, an American businessman who has been sent by his unnamed company to an unnamed country, finds himself lost and confused when he fails to prepare for his trip and arrives without knowing the language or culture.

His subconscious arrogance leaves him emotionally isolated, and keeps him in a state of perpetual bewilderment as this strange world spins beyond his control. People may not be who they seem, and Lowell does not know who to trust. For a show with relatively little plot, Washburn creates some very strong suspense, and many powerful moments.

To let us share Lowell's confusion, Washburn has invented a language for the "native" characters to speak. The language is wonderful, sounding genuine and consistent between the actors. (Washburn does have some mercy on us– when the native characters are alone, they speak English. Only when we need to see how alien Lowell is do we hear their language.) To director Ken Rus Schmoll's credit, he does not have the actors speak in faux-foreign accents to indicate their nationality. They speak English with American accents, but make minor mistakes with the language to indicate their varying levels of expertise. It's a clever device, effective and refreshing. Schmoll's use of the entire space at 45 Bleeker, rather than just the immediate playing area, is also very effective. The area is huge, and he makes every part of it work. (Sue Rees' sparse but functional set design helps.) The actors all give strong performances, especially Heidi Schreck as the secretive young woman who may be able to save Lowell, himself played innocently by Mark Shanahan.

Strong though it is, there is some room for improvement in the play: Washburn goes out of her way to avoid actually naming the foreign country or its language, which may be a detriment to the piece as a whole. If she had simply invented a name for this fictional land as well as a language, she could have avoided the frequent contrivances she must use to not say the name. It doesn't make the location any more mysterious, nor universal; the device merely makes the script more convoluted. The script could also use some general tightening and tweaking. But by and large, The Internationalist is one of the more innovative, intriguing, and interesting plays I've seen in a long time, and I am very eager to see what Anne Washburn will come up with next.

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