REVIEW: TAUT HOSPITAL DRAMA OFFERS A THOUGHT-PROVOKING, SATISFYING PRODUCTION @ PREMIERE STAGES

By Ruth Ross

Chosen from 700 submissions to the Premiere Stages Play Festival and workshopped through several readings before being fully staged, Diversions by Scott Organ is, at first glance, a traditional whodunnit—complete with multiple suspects, several red herrings and a dogged detective—but served up with an unusual twist. The “crime” involves the diversion of drugs, such as fentanyl and opioids, from a locked hospital pharmacy to be sold on the street or for personal use. (Left: Dani Nelson as Emilia and Jeaniene Green as Bess)

In the current age of widespread opioid addiction, this very real situation is given a smart examination by playwright Organ, who focuses on four nurses in an ICU unit who are asked by their supervisor to cooperate with an investigator sent by the hospital authorities to find the culprit. This poses a conundrum for the colleagues because, in circumstances like this, all personnel are suspects, and all fear retaliation if they confess to drug addiction.

Over 90 tense minutes, as the drama unfolds in the unit break room, the audience sits on the edge of their collective seats as John Wooten’s taut direction teases out each nurse’s back story to reveal why they could be a suspect in the theft. The unit supervisor Bess, a warmly efficient Jeaniene Green, has pledged to support her personnel, but they don’t really present a united front for each other, other than standing up to the sly investigator, Josephine Holden, played by Michelle Liu Coughlin (right, with Nelson) with beguiling cordiality that masks a crafty interior, whom they accuse of invading their private space.

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that playwright and director have such control of the material and the performances that we don’t know the solution until the very end of the play.

Is it Mandy, the young newcomer to the unit, whose boyfriend seems to have no job and who might be selling drugs to make ends meet? Played by Edie Salas Miller (left, with Green and Lucas Iverson), she hasn’t seemed to meld with the others; indeed, two of them are aggravated by her sleeping in the break room while the other offers her support and guidance. Is it the Amy (played by DeAnna Lenhart with brusque officiousness), who suffers from back pain? Is it Emilia (a kind-hearted Dani Nelson) who claims she suffers from “moral injury” from having to assign ventilators to patients during the pandemic? Or is it Mike (an effervescent Lucas Iverson) whose chirpy demeanor deals with a difficult ex-wife and a disabled child and who is emotionally affected when he loses a patient?

By the time the lights come down, the mystery has been solved. Looking back on the action, it’s easy to see where clues have been dropped, but it’s still a bit of a surprise. The guilty character has made a defining choice and taken full accountability, but the fact that everyone could be the culprit says a great deal about the way we view each other in dire situations, about how all could be guilty while only one is.

Bethanie Wampol Watson has designed a set that is a paradigm for every break room in every hospital, the perfect place for a “locked room mystery” to occur. Agatha Christie would have loved it. Karen Lee Hart’s costume design may not deviate much from the scrubs worn by ICU nurses, but they lend verisimilitude to the situation. Only the fashionable duds worn by Jo Holden set her apart from the nurses and provide a jarring note to the nurses’ uniforms. Lighting by Zack Gage and Sound by Tyler Sautner denote the passage of time. (Right: Nelson, Michelle Liu Coughlin and DeAnna Lenhart)

As Director John Wooten said at the talkback with the playwright following the Sunday afternoon performance, “David Mamet said, ‘All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation …. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is.’”

Scott Organ’s Diversion is the perfect example of Mamet’s teaching. As he peels back the layers, the truth reveals itself, leading to a satisfying and thought-provoking denouement. Premiere Stages has, once again, given local theatergoers a polished production and a worthy addition to dramatic literature. Kudos to the playwright, director and actors for a rewarding dramatic experience.

Diversion will be performed at the Bauer Boucher Theatre Center, Vaugh-Eames Hall, on the campus of Kean University, 1000 Morris Ave., Union, through September 22. For information and tickets, call the box office at 908.737.4077 or visit www.premierestagesatkean.com online.