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Monday, January 13, 2025

REVIEW: THOUGHTFUL, TRANSFORMATIVE CHATHAM PLAYERS' OWO "WORLD BUILDERS" IS STORYTELLING AT ITS FINEST

By Ruth Ross

By the time you’re reading this, you will have missed the Chatham Community Players’ most recent One Weekend Only production, World Builders, by Johnna Adams, a two-person, dark romantic comedy about, of all things, schizoid personality disorder and the transformative power of love.

Both themes are heavy, but Adams’ witty and discursive dialogue, convincingly delivered by two consummate actors, draws the audience so deeply into the imaginary—and quite different—worlds they both have created that we can almost inhabit them too.

The plot is fairly straightforward: Max and Whitney live in their own imaginary worlds. Both are patients in a clinical trial experimenting with a new drug, a treatment that will cure them of their schizophrenic dreams and flights of fancy and make them functioning members of society. As the pills take effect, their fantasies fade, and while struggling to preserve their illusions, they fall in love. Ultimately, Max and Whitney must choose between a love that is real and the imaginary  worlds that they have built.

On a sterile psychiatric clinic lounge set designed by Steve Ruskin and decorated by Joelle Bochner, Director John A.C. Kennedy leads Jessica Phelan (Whitney) and Jason Kruk (Max) through their dramatic paces to remarkable success.

Phelan’s outgoing Whitney (right) talks nonstop about the expansive, incredibly detailed world she’s created, one she can rewind whenever something unplanned happens. Her exhausting enthusiasm is infectious and interesting. Phelan delivery of her character’s river of words is impressive; reciting long monologues must tire her out as much as they do the audience, yet her energy and natural, convincing delivery never flags. Indeed, one might not suspect that her character has a schizoid personality disorder.

Conversely, Kruk’s Max (left) is severely awkward, more buttoned-up, and one might suspect that he has a schizoid personality disorder. Physically, he flinches as Whitney bombards him with questions about his world while piling on details of hers. His world, involving a concrete bunker holding kidnapped women awaiting their deaths, is bleaker, gloomier, more hopeless than Whitney’s and more concerning. Why would such a mild-mannered, shy and unassuming man create such a regimented, ghastly, repulsive world? Kruk reveals Max’s inner demons slowly, so slowly that we are not put off by the gruesome details he provides but rather sympathetic to his illness.

While playwright Adams never reveals the impetus for their mental disorders, in an interview, she said, “The questions in this play are: ‘Is mental illness really so bad? At what point is mental illness productive or even superior to normal interactions in the world? Who’s allowed to make that judgment call? Is the patient allowed to say, ‘I’m not suffering. I’m kind of enjoying my mental illness?’ At what point does it become obviously unhealthy, insane behavior”?

While the second act ran a bit long and felt repetitive, the action was always engrossing. Comic relief is found in the awkwardness produced by a lack of practice in delivering adult romantic feelings, and we find ourselves rooting for Whitney and Max’s relationship, despite the complexity of living in the real world where they plan to live alone and let Whitney to stop taking her pills.

World Builders offered an empathetic look at people with schizoid personality disorders, and the classic mental health struggle of losing parts of one’s identity when medicated to behave more “normally.” It’s a quirky examination of mental illness from the patient’s perspective, driven by two splendid performances and taut direction.

You may have missed the Chatham Players’ recent One Weekend Only show but be sure to look out for the next one. This is the second OWO production I have seen (the first was the fabulous Mary’s Wedding). The amount of work and energy put into three performances is staggering and a testament to this little black box theater that dares to step beyond the tried-and-true fare of many community theaters. We are lucky to have such a plucky, adventurous troupe here in New Jersey.

World Builders ran for just one weekend—January 10, 11 and 12—at the Chatham Playhouse, 23 N. Passaic Ave., Chatham. Check this blog often for news on what comes next for this terrific group of theater folk.