What I liked
Real in every sense. The scale is small—four characters, two conversations, the world outside beautifully and heartbreakingly uncaring about any of it—but the depth is profound. The characters are written and performed with specificity and nuance; the writer, refreshingly, does not care about attention to himself: there is no pomp around “important” lines, no gravitas added or foreshadowed, no extended set-up for humor or attention, and he is as comfortable with silence as he is with words. The actors, equally refreshingly, are the same: they do a wonderful job simply existing, navigating that day’s trials and tribulations; you believe that they were doing the same thing yesterday, and will do the same tomorrow. The play is not immersive or meta in any way; the lines and performances are never playing to you (or worse, pandering to you). To the contrary, there are times its privacy and vulnerability make you, as the audience, feel almost intrusive. You are watching characters doing their best to find connection and meaning in the narrow, hemmed in space of the world they are allowed—by both their circumstances and themselves—to occupy. And the deeper they inhabit their sliver of the world, the more identifiable and true their existences become. The result is a production that is incredibly moving precisely because it’s not going out of its way to try to be. And the overall effect is one of mutual tenderness and empathy, which, in retrospect, are kind of the lifeblood of the production as whole. What a wonderful place to create from.
What I didn't like
Well, real in every sense except one. This is in no way the production’s fault, and the actors and director did a phenomenal job given the constraints, but the nature of the narrative begged for a space in which it could believably live. The weight of a filled mug of coffee, the clutter on a cramped household’s kitchen table…I look forward to seeing it again in its own settled space.
My overall impression
A reminder that size is not the same thing as power, Unplugged Electric Guitar is an incisive, witty, honest, expertly crafted and performed story whose underlying message of compassion and understanding will speak—in the most sensitive, humble way—to anyone who has felt adrift. To (probably pretentiously) quote Albee: “good writers define reality.” This reality is both beautifully defined by the writer and beautifully rendered by the production.
