by Joel Elkins

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” Morgan Freeman as “Red” in Shawshank Redemption.The Unseen, now playing at the Road Theatre, depicts two prisoners in adjoining cells in some nondescript prison at some time either in the past, present or future. All we know is that the prison is run by “the regime,” and there appears to be (or at least the prisoners believe there is) some sort of resistance. The prisoners themselves don’t know why they have been imprisoned or why they are being subjected to torture on a daily basis. Initially the torture was accompanied by interrogation, but the questions stopped some time ago, even though the torture continues nonetheless. The protagonists, Mr. Wallace and Mr. Valdez, have shared adjacent cells for years, but have never seen each other. They talk to each other through the cell walls to pass the time, to commiserate or simply to maintain their sanity.

Settings of unwarranted confinement and purposeless abuse, like political prisons or Nazi concentration camps, seem to be a natural setting for human dramas. This is probably because of their starkness, in both senses of the word. First of all, the roles are clear. There are no messy details to obfuscate who is in control and who is in fact the victim. Secondly, because individuals are pressed to their physical and emotional limits, the setting functions as a human laboratory, testing man’s reactions to the most extreme of circumstances. For example, how does he react when he has absolutely no control over his environment, when everything that happens to him seems random?

Apparently, he tends to seek order among the chaos, or, as one of the characters elegantly puts it, “sees constellations where there are only stars,” finding hope in random events, latching onto the barest of possibilities because that’s all there is. And when, as more than likely happens, that randomness is revealed for what it truly is, the despair that replaces the hope is worse than if there were no hope to begin with, evidencing that hope is indeed “a dangerous thing.” Each of the prisoners, at different times and against his better judgment, falls prey to this human proclivity, and pays the price.

The play also examines the profound effect this unadulterated human suffering has on the perpetrators, who are, despite evidence to the contrary, only human. “Smash,” the guard and primary torturer in this fictional prison appears only briefly but his impact on the play is much greater. He cannot help feeling something when faced constantly with the suffering that is occurring at his hands. I wouldn’t’t call it sympathy. It’s certainly not empathy. Even shame would not be the right word. Let’s call it unease. Despite his efforts, he can’t seem to shake the feeling and (naturally? understandably?) blames his suffering on the source of this feeling, the victims themselves.

The acting and direction in this “two and a half” person play is first-rate. I especially like the fact that the two prisoners do not try to emulate one another’s demeanor, demonstrating that different people may react to similar circumstances differently. Matt Kirkwood portrays Mr. Valdez as the simpler of the two men, undergoing the same physical travails but apparently more resigned and not nearly as despondent as his neighbor. Darin Singelton, as the more cerebral Mr. Wallace, shows the appearance of a man at his wit’s end, struggling not only with the physical and emotional persecution, but perhaps equally tormented mentally by the loss of that which he is perhaps more accustomed to and deeply cherishes, control over his own circumstances. Douglas Dickerman, gives a strong performance as Smash, exhibiting the seemingly oxymoronic emotion of selfish guilt.

The Unseen is at times painful to watch. The images are disturbing. You are personally witnessing the emotional breakdown of human souls and imagining the physical destruction of the human body. It is also painful to listen to. The barrage of seemingly arbitrary sounds with which the prisoners are constantly assaulted can be jarring and distracting at first. Amazingly, one learns to tune them out, to regulate to them during the course of the short one-act play, perhaps a tiny taste of institutionalization to which the audience can attest.

Is this a commentary on any specific situation, say the detainment facility at Guantánamo Bay? One could certainly make a case for the analogy: a powerful regime, rumor of a resistance movement, prisoners swept up, tortured and interrogated, often for no compelling reason, and the resulting “deterioration” of the system, human guards falling prey to their humanity. In fact, due to the simplicity and universality of its themes, The Unseen can be analogized to any number of situations. Indeed, the human laboratory of a theme can serve as a veritable Petri dish for reflection and discourse.

(Note: The title of the play perhaps refers to society’s “out-of-sight-out-of-mind” approach to its prisoner population, or the way citizens turn a blind eye to atrocities committed it their name, or to the fact that the only real human contact these two prisoners have occurs between hard cold stone walls. However, I hope it doesn’t’t refer to the production itself, the performance I attended witnessing the three person cast nearly outnumbering the audience.)

The Unseen is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through August 22, 2009.

The Road Theatre is located at 5108 Lankershim Blvd., two blocks south of Magnolia in North Hollywood

Ticket prices: $30.00 (Seniors, Union: $25.00, Students: $15.00)

Reservations online at www.roadtheatre.org or by phone at (866) 811-4111.