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No, this is just what Baker and Gold do, and better than almost anyone else. They're masterful minimalist storytellers, she crafting dialogue that maximizes what's usually a very few words, he evoking the most sumptuous emotions from the most outwardly ordinary situations. So it's perhaps not surprising that John, which is all about the stories we tell each other and ourselves to survive, brings out what just may be the best to date in a duo that's already scored such unqualified successes as Circle Mirror Transformation and the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Flick (which is currently playing Off-Broadway). It's evident, as mentioned, from our first glimpse of Mimi Lien's eyebrow-raising set: a dazzlingly intricate bed-and-breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It's a curious mélange of styles, ranging from backwoods-rustic to faux-French, and is choked floor to ceiling with collectibles: miniature houses, candlesticks, teddy bears, and dolls, all of which may well have exploded from beneath the majestic upstage Christmas tree. It's homey, yes, but unsettlingly so; though nothing looks wrong, even as choked in the shadows of a late-November night (Mark Barton's lighting design could not be better), it's all so perfectly imperfect that you can't shake the feeling that something—maybe something big—isn't quite right. You'll revisit that feeling many times over the course of the play, though things appear normal enough as soon as we begin seeing who's colliding here. Two youngish guests, Elias (Christopher Abbott) and Jenny (Hong Chau), arrive at the door and are greeted by the kindly but just-a-bit-off proprietress, Mertis (Georgia Engel). She's firmly doting to them, practically grandmotherly, with her offer of peanut butter fudge and descriptions of her strict diet ("67 pounds in four months," she whispers, conspiratorially and proudly). The couple is running late, and in the midst of some sort of disagreement, so no one tarries, and Mertis brings the night to a close by stepping to the nearby grandfather clock and moving the hands ahead to the next morning.
"You know it's haunted, Mertis," barks her blind friend, Genevieve (Lois Smith), as part of her daily visit, during a recitation about a strange rustling sound she believes follows her wherever she goes. "You know it's capable of anything." And after three acts of seeing these four people witness their lives and relationships unravel in ever-more shocking and harrowing ways, all apparently centered on a mysterious spirit of malice (named John, of course) who infects their existences, chances are you'll find yourself wondering if Genevieve is right. But you will undoubtedly find yourself on the edge of your seat during most of that time: nearly three and a half hours, of which not so much as a second is wasted. John is a spine-tingling spellbinder in the grand tradition of Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, yet thoroughly American in its attitude and execution. Baker builds up the suspense so gradually, but so completely, that eventually anything that pierces it invokes shivers (Mertis reading from The Call of Cthulhu, a player piano firing up of its own accord, and the Christmas tree's lights operating on their own sentient logic were among the most unsettling for me, but there are dozens more). And the third act, in which Elias and Jenny reach their full, violent boil, is every bit as searing for the emotions on display as for their disquieting backdrop. This is not as profound an evening as The Flick, which contains within it a full deconstruction of class, race, and success in the contemporary United States. But in some ways it's an even more withering examination of the human condition and the fiction we use to patch its holes. Elias and Jenny, trying to make their partnership of three years last a fourth, are wrapped and trapped in cultural detritus they can't sweep away, and are bound to determine the optimal level of joint honesty they can bear. Mertis, slowly watching the disintegration of her second husband, must comfort herself recollecting how they met in the wake of her disastrous and suffocating first marriage. So powerful do these characters realize stories are that Genevieve even obliterates the fourth wall, and postpones one of the intermissions so she can describe how she went mad in seven stages. That explication—really a continuation of an earlier one in which she outlined how her husband possessed her—may be the most riveting here, delivered as it is by Smith with an unforgiving but appealing gruffness that underscores exactly how much further down the track to true independence Genevieve has progressed. But it's also emblematic of Gold's work throughout, treating something that's disturbing, even impossible, so that it's not only stripped naked, but becomes vital: a moment that, by virtue of being at odds with reality, is ultimately closer than most of what surrounds it. Gold ensures that everything is like that, from the designs (which, counting Bray Poor's absorbing sound, is one of the most unified I have ever encountered onstage) to the performances. Engel uses her typical daffiness as a shield behind which Mertis can hide, but when she lowers it, we get to know a woman wracked with incredible pain and loss, but who's also striven well beyond our understanding (maybe too far) to overcome it; it's a beautiful, humorous, achingly honest portrayal that works because of how hard Engel tries to convince you it's anything but. Abbott, too, is full of surprises, and he buries fascinating levels of Elias's own hurt within an angry outer shell that he only slowly sheds to reveal a man who's far more complex, and less predictable, than we at first suspect. If there's a flaw—and that's a big if—it may rest in Chau's overeagerness as Jenny; she comes across as so dementedly bright, to the point of desperation, that descending to the depths into which Jenny ultimately falls is a slightly less smooth process than is ideal. But even within that potential overestimation (which may work itself out with time), Chau is wonderful at letting us see every frustrating facet of this woman who's never entirely sure who she is. Baker, however, has no such problems, and displays as an artist and a technician a total confidence and self-assuredness in John. She hasn't deployed a single gimmick, but instead uses to the fullest every tool at her disposal, up to and including the world beyond the proscenium, to explore and critique what storytelling means for the participants and the audience alike. And then, on top of that, she tells an engrossing story—one that other playwrights will struggle to match, let alone top, this season. In Act III, Elias and Jenny discover the hard way, when they become enmeshed in a legend of their own making, just how dangerous and necessary such acts can be. It's maybe the best scene Baker has ever written, pungent and transfixing in how deep it cuts and how much it says with so little. But it's but a tiny piece of John, which plumbs the soul, head, and heart so more fully, and more excitingly, than even the spookiest ghost story could possibly manage.
John
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