The Debate Society is a taut little theater triad comprised of director Oliver Butler and wizardly actors Paul Thureen and Hannah Bos. Their 2006 production, The Snow Hen, took a Norwegian folk tale about an abandoned girl and wove it into a charmingly dark tapestry of melancholy and mystique. Now they’re back at the Ontological Theater (Richard Foreman’s regular digs) with The Eaten Heart, an enchanting mood-play very loosely inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century tome The Decameron, which packs in 100 stories told over the course of ten days by ten people killing time during the Black Plague.
No familiarity with The Decameron required; The Debate Society employs Boccaccio’s picaresque as a springboard into their own portraits of contemporary isolation. In this mesmerizing two-hander - that might also be dubbed The Secret Lives of Seedy Hotel Rooms - Thureen and Bos slip seamlessly in and out of multiple characters at a roadside hotel. There’s the Renaissance Fair worker whose TV mysteriously plays without her bidding, the third rate magician fruitlessly practicing his “turn the TV on” trick in the adjacent room, the neglected wife of a radio evangelist and her coveted pizza delivery boy, the salesman who’s convinced the “voodoo” bikini briefs he picked up in New Orleans afford him invisibility. (Hysterical hi-jinks ensue.)
It may start out a little slow (depending on your state of mind), but the company soon envelops the room in their meticulously evocative spell. The sound design (Nathan Leigh) is marvelous and scenic designer Amanda Rehbein works wonders by somehow materializing three hotel rooms, a swimming pool, a cheesy cabaret, a kitchen and dining room in The Ontological’s cozy space. If all involved are at times a little too enamored with their own atmospherics, it’s hard to blame them; it’s boldly imaginative and spellbinding stuff, thanks in no small part to Bos and Thureen’s nuanced performances. As they race through their finely-drawn menagerie of characters, the duo multiplies into countless distinct incarnations of modern longing. At turns hilariously endearing and hauntingly sinister, their inspired mix of ingredients makes for a four star feast.
The Eaten Heart continues through June 9th at The Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Tickets cost $17.
