The idea of a post-9/11 comedy seems fraught enough.
Christopher Durang’s whacked-out “Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them” features a threatening, swarthy fellow named Zamir and a short-fused all-American gun enthusiast named Leonard, along with some enhanced interrogation techniques, a porn-directing preacher, and a visit to Hooters. The 2009 play looks at just how far we’ll go to prevent threats to the homeland, real or imagined.
The Titanic Theatre Company also happens to be staging the play at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, not far from where one of the Marathon bombing suspects died and the other was captured after a shootout with police.
“Performing at the Arsenal Center, we’re very aware of what was happening right outside of there just months ago,” said director Adam Zahler, whose production runs through Aug. 10. “That’s kind of informed what we’ve been doing.”
Serious as the topic is, though, “Why Torture Is Wrong . . .” is a comedy, in the often farcical, surreal Durang manner.
“People are, I don’t want to say that they are on edge, because I don’t think that Americans are on edge about terrorism these days,” Zahler says. “Certainly in Boston recent events have reminded us that it’s not far away. But in the early days after 9/11, people were very much on edge, and we weren’t laughing about it. And it took Durang seven [or] eight years before he was able to write something . . . where we could laugh and enjoy ourselves and still be able to think about the ramifications of who we are in this post-9/11 world.
“The political climate continues to be very, very charged and the play certainly has some fun with that,” he says. “It’s a very, very current play and it’s a very, very American play.”
As the play opens, Felicity (Caroline Rose Markham) wakes up in a motel bed next to Zamir (Alexander J. Morgan) after a night of drunken debauchery. To her horror, he informs her that they got married. He claims he’s Irish, but won’t say exactly what he does for a living, except that it’s at night and not strictly legal. He also cheerfully admits to having a violent temper, so she’d better watch herself.
She takes him home to meet her parents, hoping they’ll help her with an annulment. Then things get really weird.
“You’re dealing with Christopher Durang, who just takes you into the most bizarre twists and turns that you can’t even necessarily explain,” says actor Jeff Gill, laughing. “He hammers you over the head sometimes with the politics, but he never stops going for the joke or the prank, the comedy in the moment. So you find yourself sometimes cringing at what you’re doing or laughing at.”
Gill plays Felicity’s father, Leonard, who spends much of his time in a locked room, ostensibly tending to his butterfly collection. The room is revealed as something entirely different, however, when Leonard decides that Zamir is a much worse threat than just an unsuitable son-in-law. Claiming membership in a shadow government, Leonard stands ready to do the tough things that the real government won’t. In this case, to Zamir.
Zahler also directed the Titanic troupe last year in Charles Busch’s comedy “The Third Story.”
“I hope what they know about me is that I try to bring real humanity to everything I do,” he says. “That I’m interested in truthful acting and understanding the characters in a complex way, so that we can get nuanced performances that really bring out the underlying meaning of the script. Even with Christopher Durang’s zany characters, the true humanity there.”
Gill seems to have that in mind when he talks about Leonard, who is very devoted to his butterfly-collection cover story.
“When I first read Leonard and auditioned for Leonard, my thought was that I was trying to evoke, at its most basic level, kind of an insane John Wayne,” he says. “But then, as we got into Leonard a little more, you begin to see a kind of social ineptitude in the man, almost an aphasia. He gets an idea and it just blows out of proportion to the point where he doesn’t know what a tennis racket is.”
Zahler and Gill spoke just a few days after controversy erupted over a Rolling Stone magazine cover image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“I think [terrorism] hovers over all of us, it really does,” Zahler says. “You can’t get away from it. You think you do, and then something occurs like that reminds you, you can’t. It’s part and parcel of the fabric of our lives.”
Company One to open with ‘Splendor’
Company One’s 2013-14 schedule features an all-female roster of playwrights. The season kicks off with “Splendor,” a world premiere by Kirsten Greenidge (“The Luck of the Irish”) Oct. 18-Nov. 16. The title-rich “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915,” a New England premiere by Jackie Sibblies Drury, follows Jan. 9-Feb.1, 2014. “The Flick,” the New England premiere of a play by Annie Baker set in a movie theater somewhere near Worcester, runs Feb. 20-March 15. The XX PlayLab, with Obehi Janice, Miranda Craigwell, and Natsu Onoda Power, takes place June 6-8. And “Astro Boy and the God of Comics,” a New England premiere conceived and directed by Power, runs July 18-Aug. 16.
“The Flick” will be presented with Suffolk University at the Modern Theatre, while “We Are Proud . . .” will run at the Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre at Emerson College’s Paramount Center. The other productions will play at the Boston Center for the Arts, where Company One is a resident company. Tickets on sale by Sept. 1, details at www.companyone.org.
Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@gmail.com.