“Life Sucks”

Aaron Posner

The cast comes on stage to prepare us.  The seven cast members banter about what the play we are about to see is all about, with suggestions that it is about “love,” “longing,” “loss,” and “how fucked up the world is.”  With that final, upbeat proclamation and a few of the regular warnings about forbidden picture-taking and candy wrappers, Vanya cheerfully says to the others, “Let’s get this facacta thing started,” and Aaron Posner’s Life Sucks commences in its Bay Area premiere at Custom Made Theatre Company.

Based loosely on Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya but faithful enough for those familiar to recognize the general progression and most, key characters, Life Sucks is set not in late nineteenth-century Russia but, as the program states, in “the ridiculous present.”  Siblings and half-siblings; father/daughter; uncle/niece, older husband with third, much younger wife; long-time family friends and family members who have been long-time enemies – Many actual relationships and some desired relationships potentially involving infidelity, love, and sex exist among the seven people we see sitting in the rather worn and tired country home of Vanya and his niece, Sonya (with a convincing scenic design by Daniel Bilodeau).  Most among them is not at all happy the life dealt him or her; and the question of the hour returns time again, “Doesn’t life suck?”  Getting to the play’s answer (or not) requires the gathered to traverse through a winding path of conversations, confrontations, and confessions inlaid with Aaron Posner’s signature, dark comedic approach that became so famous in his other adaptations of Chekhov (and also of Shakespeare), like his 2013 Stupid F**cking Bird satire of The Seagull.

Aaron Posner takes the bemoaning about their lives made by Chekhov’s prototypes and exaggerates to the hilt their senses of doom while bringing in a whole slew of new, current woes of the world (e.g. climate change) that potentially just makes things triply worse for this updated, modern-day cast. The visiting Professor (Dave Sikula) in this case is doubly stuck with head in the academic clouds, talking pompously as his young wife, Ella, bluntly tells him that he talks “at,” “through,” and “over” other people – like a “flagrant prick.”  Vanya (Evan Sokol) makes no bones of his disdain for the Professor (“He only knows one-fifth of what he professes”), who then quickly returns all Vanya’s insults in what becomes a back-and-forth volley of mutual ridicule.  This Vanya, even more than his predecessor in Chekhov, is sick of his life from which “joy is gone” and comes to the conclusion about his life, “As far as I can see, I have done everything wrong.” 

The one thing Vanya believes can make his life better is for the Professor’s young, voluptuous wife, Ella, to love him; but Ella has absolutely no interest and is quickly annoyed by his entreaties.  While she is aware of her beauty, this Ella (Emily Stone) is even more bored than is Chekhov’s Yelena with her striking looks, with the men who swoon after her,  and especially with her life as wife of the Professor.  On the other hand, she is also aroused and drawn in her weaker moments to the ridiculously romantic ploys and approaches of the debonair Dr. Aster (Gabriel Montoya), best friend of Vanya.  

Aster’s drinking of vodka and his puppy-dog lovesickness for Ella also exceed by many degrees his literary predecessor.  He totally misses the fact that the young, plain-looking Sonia (Jensen Power) – daughter to the professor and niece of Vanya – pines for him but is never able directly to let him know, with her creating a story about “radiant, invisible butterflies” as she tries unsuccessfully to awaken within him some attraction for her.

Each of the above actors markedly and masterfully depicts the varying degrees and expression of ennui their characters suffer, with each of their personas reaching at some point the near-breaking point as if standing on the ledge of a tall building and contemplating stepping forward.  Often at that point, each empties the stage of all the others and turns to the audience to explain further the personal dilemmas of said-life, breaking the fourth wall and asking for our opinions and/or advice.  Sometimes, these audience interventions are more like a lecture (e.g., the professor on the woes of aging), sometimes a hopeful but doomed solicitation (e.g., Vanya’s asking, “Do you think she [Ella] loves me?”), and sometimes a spoken dream dared not told anyone else (e.g., Sonya’s fantasy about making love to Aster).  Under the astute direction of Brian Katz, these time-outs are some of the better, more revealing moments of the play, allowing us to see deeper and more authentically into otherwise, oft-overall-shallow personalities.

Throughout the play’s four acts divided into two halves of the evening’s two hours, fifteen-minute duration, many scenes unfold between various twosomes as characters seek counsel, alliance, new friendships, and of course, solace.  Rarely, of course, is any one individual satisfied that help has been received – often leading to yet another downing of a glass of vodka, an ongoing action during the entire evening as a boozy tribute to the Russian origins of this updated play. 

A prime imbiber is Babs, an older family friend also living in Vanya and Sonya’s house.  Babs sits around in her Berkeley-appropriate, patched jeans, black boots, and t-shirt (part of Rachel Heiman’s overall character-defining costume designs) drinking much Vodka and actually being the play’s most comforting, wisest counseling source.  As Babs, Linda Ayres-Frederick gives the lone, calming voice that “Life is just life” and “We should be grateful everyday.”  During her alone time with the audience, she relates a story about her Zadie Oskar and his zeal to be a “life eater,” with her leaving us with a suggestion to begin each meal with each person at the table naming one current “gratitude.”  In a play where everyone else is grousing continually about how hard life is and how much it sucks, tipsy and otherwise quiet Babs provides a possible answer to “Doesn’t life suck?” that the others have trouble hearing.

The final addition to this strange household in Aaron Posner’s version is Pickles, a “half-step-sister” to Vanya – one that is portrayed with big heart and sparkle by Brittany Nicole Sims.  Pickles with eager sincerity makes off-the-wall comments that tend to bring conversations to a puzzling pause. (Vanya calls her “the conversation annihilator.”)  She believes in love forever – even for a lover who left her twelve years earlier – and she is avid believer that “life does not suck” – period.  But unlike Babs, she does not bring convincing alternatives to the table and in fact is portrayed as childlike even simple-minded.  The reason for her inclusion by the playwright is not altogether clear to me.

One of the most brilliantly directed and revealing moments of the play is not unlike a 1970s encounter group when Vanya is placed in a chair with all the other characters surrounding him.  Vanya, who lives in a state of increasingly feeling sorry for himself, suddenly in confronted by the others, each who steps forward to ask, “What, am I supposed to feel sorry for you?  Each then proceeds in no uncertain terms to let him know just how screwed up her/his life is, with the skins of the onion being peeled off to reveal new aspects we can appreciate about the characters.

The routes characters take to determine if they can escape their self-defined traps of living within a life that sucks lead them to explosive and shout-filled confrontations, drink-downing ‘oh-woe-is-me’ sharing, passionate but doomed sensual encounters, and bullet-powered attacks (literally) – the latter that becomes just one more failure in Vanya’s self-proclaimed life of failures.  Along the way, we get to laugh at their misery but also to begin to hope that somehow, someone will finally listen to Babs sitting in the corner, sipping her vodka while sighing, “Life is just life.” 

Unfortunately, it takes too long to get to that point where these characters are worth our caring about them, partly because in the play’s beginning they seem to have so much difficulty making connections with each other.  The entire first act at times has periods that bog down a bit.  However, after intermission the play settles into a much more meaningful flow of interactions and events, sustaining both humor and attaining an increasing felt-empathy for the characters in their searches for something worthwhile and satisfying in their lives. 

But then the playwright makes the choice in the end to have characters once again break the fourth wall (this time as an entire group), with their inviting audience members to answer questions like, “What do you think, does life suck?, “What in your life sucks?”, and “What makes this life worth living?”  For me, the interest and attention built up during the play quickly and completely was zapped away at that moment, resulting in what felt like a rather sophomoric, anticlimactic ending.  Even Brian Katz’s otherwise wise, funny, and impactful choices as director and the fine talents of this assembled cast could not save the playwright’s decision to end his play in this deflating, meaningless manner.

Rating: 3 E

Life Suckscontinues through June 1, 2019 at Custom Made Theatre Company, 533 Sutter Street, San Francisco.  Tickets are available online at www.custommade.orgor by calling 415-789-2682 (CMTC).

Photo Credits:  Jay Yamada