Chesney Mitchell and John Collins (Photo: Russ Rowland)

 

It's Not What It Looks Like

By Deirdre Donovan

With the dog days of summer settling in, it's refreshing to visit John Collins' thoughtful two-hander, It's Not What It Looks Like at the SoHo Playhouse, the winner of its 2023 Lighthouse Series. Directed by Vincent DeGeorge, and in collaboration with Chesney Mitchell, this play is dominated by the tantalizing question: What does it mean to be seen as a good person?

The Prologue, paradoxically subtitled "The End" in the script, opens the play with a noirish flair. On a dark stage, we see and hear a thunder-and-lightning storm as M, a young man, enters the stage, wiping off blood from his hands with a rag. A beat later, W, a stylish young woman, enters, frenetically typing on her phone, her shirt and arms also stained with blood. M, cognizant that the audience is observing their every move, grabs W by the shoulders and spins her around to see the audience.  Half in shock, she breaks the fourth wall, somberly intoning: "This isn't what it looks like." 

Indeed, the rest of the play divulges the sequence of events that brought M and W to this moment. We learn that they are two cousins, M (Collins) and W (Mitchell), from North Dakota, who have transplanted themselves to New York City. W, a social media specialist, was the first to relocate; M, a writer for a TV children's show, joined her years later, after his father's death. They eventually meet another transplant from North Dakota at a nightclub, the suave Martino "Marty" Pesci, who befriends them, and over a period of months, tries to help them to heal from their grief and more fully embrace New York. 

Chesney Mitchell, John Collins (Photo: Russ Rowland)

The play structurally unfolds as a testimony given by M and W, although they will act out other characters and offstage voices will be interwoven into the dialogue. M and W also are constantly flipping between addressing the audience and being in a scene. Although this might play out clunkily in the hands of less talented actors, Collins and Mitchell manage to pull it off seamlessly.

M and W's complex relationship is at the heart of the play. In spite of the friction that sometimes builds up between them as cousins, they both eventually agree that blood runs thicker than water.

Indeed, it's W who helps to support M financially when he gets fired from his tv writing job and goes on unemployment.  It's also W who warns M about trusting the mysterious Marty too much and seeing him as a kind of father figure. In short, W is the voice of reason in the play, even though she too at times can fall under the spell of the smooth-talking and generous Marty.

Whereas Marty never physically appears on stage, M and W's vivid recounting of their meetings with him make him a real presence in the drama. After being introduced to him at the nightclub, M swears that he remembers him as a big investor out in the Dakotas and that his Dad knew him. Then, in an aside to the audience, he adds: "He had this incredible suaveness. It's like he walked out of a Scorsese film."

 

W is more skeptical than M about their new acquaintance, although she is impressed when he asks her to take a ride on his Vespa (she refuses!) and when he invites them to meet him at a fancy restaurant, where his friend Jean-Georges is the chef.  But she still feels that there is something off about him. Worse, she can't get a read on him, which is shocking for her.

Chesney Mitchell, John Collins (Photo: Russ Rowland)

Collins and Mitchell are convincing in their roles as M and W, respectively. Not only do they have excellent stage chemistry, they have tremendous stamina to be on stage together with no breaks for 90 minutes. Of course, their scrubbed face looks, combined with their natural acting technique, bring an undeniable freshness to the production.

Nicholas Pollock's lighting is terrific in heightening the dramatic action in this 90-minute show. Whether it's illuminating the crescendo of the storm in the opening scene, spotlighting M and W's faces moving in synch at a tennis match with Marty, or simply capturing their angst as they sit in two chairs on a bare-swept stage delivering their testimony.

It's Not What It Looks Like is part thriller, part detective story, part dysfunctional family drama, and altogether a satisfying new play from an up-and-coming actor-playwright. If you have been yearning to see a show that scratches beneath surface appearances, Collins' play ingeniously does just that, and more.

It's Not What It Looks Like

Through August 10^th.

At the SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, Manhattan.

For more information, visit www.sohoplayhouse.com

Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission