BWW Reviews: THE THIN PLACE at Seattle’s Intiman

Seattle's Intiman Theatre presents a truly personal piece in their current production of "The Thin Place".  Personal to those that conceived and wrote it and one could argue that maybe they should have kept it to themselves.

Written by Sonya Schneider, conceived and directed by Andrew Russell and based on interviews of Seattle residents from KUOW's Marcie Sillman, "The Thin Place" takes a look at differing views of religion from 11 different people.  And all 11 are played by one actor, Gbenga Akinnagbe.  The show itself centers on one of the characters, Isaac, the son of a Pentecostal minister who is losing his faith.  And so throughout his own journey he comes upon the 10 others who vary from people such as a former Episcopal priest who had been defrocked for converting to Islam, a gay political activist who grew up in South Africa during apartheid and a Native American Woman who returns to her tribe after a childhood of "passing" as white.  A cast of characters as varied as the population of Seattle itself.

I must first say that this kind of show is not my cup of tea.  Nothing bores me more than people sitting around and pontificating about their religion or even religion in general.  To me, religion should just be a personally held belief and no one needs to inflict their beliefs on others.  So for me, listening to 11 people go on and on about their religious beliefs for 90 minutes is like being stuck in an overly self important cocktail party that won't end.  So keeping that in mind you can understand why I found this play overly preachy and really quite cliché.  Yes, there were interesting takes on the various beliefs systems presented here but they were interesting takes on the same old stories.  And ultimately the play just petered out to no end other than a somewhat cheesy grand lighting and staging cue.  Which is really the only place a play filled with so many different beliefs can go as no one is going (or should) ever change their beliefs based on someone else's beliefs.  So there can never be an end, just like discussions on religion.

OK, so I didn't care for the subject matter, what about the performance?  One man playing 11 different people from various walks of life should be interesting, right?  Well, kinda.  While Akinnagbe turned in some quite varied characters, each with their own voice and mannerisms, all of them came across with the same intensity.  Everything was delivered with the same level of "what I'm telling you is profound so you should pay attention.", which probably didn't help with the show coming across as preachy.  It was especially noticeable at the end when we heard some excerpts from the actual people interviewed, many of whose delivery of their beliefs did not come across that way but more conversational.  Akinnagbe and Russell could have done well to infuse some more of that conversational tone in the play.  Instead it started at a level of grandiose and stayed there making me care even less what the people at the cocktail party from my own personal little hell had to say.

Now, I should also mention that other audience members seemed to be really enjoying and getting a lot out of this.  I can only assume these are the types of people who enjoy this topic of discussion.  And for those that do and find it enlightening and though provoking then this show could well be a winner for you.  For the rest of us, we'll just go over to the other side of the room and change the topic of conversation to something else.  Hey, how about those Mariners?!

"The Thin Place" plays at Seattle's Intiman Theatre through June 13^th.  For tickets or information contact the Intiman box office at 206-269-1900 or visit them online at www.intiman.org.

Photo Credit: Chris Bennion

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