The Americans
Martin Denton · November 4, 2004

A young man tells us that he has written a poem that caused his apartment to explode: the walls and ceiling blew away, leaving him aloft, with the poem, above the city. The explosion led to a kind of cataclysm, with plaster raining down on the east side and splinters of wood falling to the west. Two more young men observe the catastrophe: the one, just departed from a Starbucks with a cup of coffee in his hand, finds himself covered in the white dust, lost in the morass; the other, in the middle of an apparently permanent and stalemated argument with his girlfriend, pushes the shards of woods off the stoop so he can take a smoke and watch the alarmed passers-by.

This, more or less, is the set-up of The Americans, the new play by Matthew Freeman; it also, more or less, is the drama's entire action. This is a sad, stirring, introspective piece, made up of three monologues chopped up so that they almost (but not quite) form a conversation. The auditor wonders: are there really three separate men here, or are they just aspects of one? They do have something in common, which is an absolute inability to move; even the one called "T," with the Starbucks cup, journeying dozens of blocks through a vanishing city, doesn't seem to actually get anywhere. These young men are inert; immobile: they can't find a way to act in the face of something unprecedented, spectacular, and frightening. They barely even react. The poet, called "D," tells us he's never experienced unfettered happiness and we know instinctively that the others, "T" and "F," would say the same thing.

The title of the play—which not all incidentally is also the title of the culprit poem—suggests not one man but all men. The Americans is very clearly Freeman's 9/11 play—9/11, that is, seen from a vantage point three years later: the inability of most of us to do anything but stand helplessly by then has been matched by our inability to make it mean anything or to change anything since. So the inertia of these young men is the inertia of a generation, of a historical moment turning back on itself. Maybe.

This is the fifth of Matthew Freeman's full-length plays that I have seen. (Full disclosure: I published one of them, in my anthology Plays and Playwrights 2002.) He's a remarkable young writer: still not thirty, he's prodigiously gifted, versatile, and smart. The other plays are a verse epic about King Arthur, a Beckettian tragicomedy about two neighbors trapped inside a tunnel under their homes, a contemporary take on medieval Mystery drama, and an absurdist farce about two siblings who hold their own mother hostage. So you see the range. With The Americans, Freeman once again heads off for uncharted terrain, dramatically and stylistically; stretches and extends himself. I won't claim to understand everything that happens in this very personal play, but I will tell you that I was strongly affected by it, maybe more than by any of the earlier works. See this to witness a significant youthful talent, on his way to finding his way.

Indeed, what moved me most in The Americans was the very candid, very naked confession of the poet, who talked about feeling used up and a has-been though still in his 20s. We live in a time of instant communication, of incredible access (e.g., the Internet), of something approaching pure democracy in terms of one's ability to put oneself "out there." But all the 'zine poets, bloggers, and off-off-Broadway playwrights almost never get any real measure of recognition; they just spill their guts into what must feel sometimes, from their end, like a vacuum or so much ether. The paradox of our time is that we can talk to each other more cheaply and easily than at any point in human history, but we hear—and are heard—less and less. Is it any wonder than D, F, and T can't find a way to react to an explosion that blows up their room and pelts them with plaster and wood?

The Americans is produced by Blue Coyote Theater Group, a young company as adventurous and versatile as this playwright. Director Gary Shrader has staged the piece with care; his choices seem fixed on adding texture and vitality to a script that is, after all, three dense monologues—very understandable, though it made me want to see a more spare production, for contrast. A simple design evoking a cityscape drifting toward unreality is provided by set/lighting designer Chris Jones and composer Margaret F. Heskin. The three roles are played by Vince Gatton (T), Kyle Ancowitz (F), and Freeman himself (D), and all do fine, precise work; if Freeman's performance feels more gapingly raw than the other two, well, that's understandable too, isn't it?