Review: "It's Not What It Looks Like" Thrives on a Pair of Marvelous Performances

It's Not What It Looks Like

Written by John Collins

Directed by Vincent DeGeorge

Collaborator: Chesney Mitchell

Presented at SoHo Playhouse

15 Vandam Street, Manhattan, NYC

July 24-August 10, 2024

Chesney Mitchell and John Collins. Photo by Russ Rowland

To open It's Not What It Looks Like, a new play from John Collins, in collaboration with Chesney Mitchell, a man (John Collins) enters, trying to clean his hands and talks about how one knows a storm is coming before he is joined by a woman (Chesney Mitchell) with blood on her (new, Lululemon) shirt. Shortly, they become aware of the audience, and their explanation of why, well, this is not what it looks like, structures the rest of this fantastic production. The 2023 winner of SoHo Playhouse's Lighthouse Series, an event showcasing the best new talent and writers across the New York City area, It's Not What It Looks Like fluidly unspools a deftly funny and poignantly affecting exploration of how trauma and loss intersect with our relationships to others and how one defines and attempts to live as a "good" person.

Cousins M (the man) and W (the woman), as they are credited in the program, remain nameless–their names, in fact, are subject to a Beckettian bleeping when spoken aloud that visibly annoys M–but however far they can be seen as a young, post-college everyman and everywoman, they are foremost compellingly particular, multidimensional individuals. M is a recently fired tv writer, W works in social media promotion, and both have relocated from North Dakota to New York City, she first and he following his father's death. M has a tendency towards isolating himself, and drinking too much, as a coping mechanism; and W, who was close to M's father and whose mother was unsupportive, to put it mildly, before she left, works constantly with little to show for it. A chance conversation at a club leads the pair to be introduced to an older man named Martino "Marty" Pesci–who is also from North Dakota and has time and money that he seems increasingly willing to lavish on M and W–and leads the audience towards, among other things, both a far-reaching explanation of how the two came to be bloodied and a contributory corrosive guilt, which has so far remained unspoken.

Marty does not appear onstage: this is M and W's "Testimony," to use the term from one of the show's projected captions (most often simply a location and a time relative to the day in need of explanation), and we experience and receive everything solely through their mediation. Nevertheless, the production vividly renders these unseen characters–such as Marty, with his big gestures and a boisterous laugh that tapers to a cough; Suzanne, an Irishwoman who runs M's favorite bodega; and free-spirited club girl Sasha–through the occasional use of offstage voiceover and, primarily, through Collins and Mitchell's excellent work as the play flows seamlessly in and out of direct address and past and present. As there are two storytellers here, M and W sometimes disagree (although we are deep into the show before one actually cuts the other off), including on what should be included and even about whether to continue. This divergence in perspectives certainly suggests one theme, but more central to the show's concerns are the struggles around being wanted or not wanted–by potential lovers or friends, by jobs or clients, even by family members. M and W's experiences demonstrate a conflict between a lack of trust and the need for others, for connections and support networks even as they, like most in our neoliberal society, are made to feel that so-called independence and self-sufficiency are the measures of a successful life. Even Sasha's guiding principle of not caring what others think might be seen as isolating from this angle, and both M and W talk about the anxiety that navigating their lives in the absence of a father figure produces, however much that might be viewed as a failure to 'adult.' One question that the show leaves us with is how to reciprocate care for another; and in the end–and related to our society's emphasis on the self-contained individual–part of what causes M and W's problems is that they can't seem to conceive of someone just being altruistic.

Under the assured direction of Vincent DeGeorge, the production moves with a feeling of urgency, even in its more reflective moments. Well framed by Nicholas Pollock and Willem Hinternhoff's lighting design, which occasionally turns the actors to silhouettes in a flash of lightning, Collins and Mitchell are absolutely tremendous, from their superb comic timing to their poignant expressions of their characters' lingering hurt and unhappiness, one sometimes turning on a dime to the other. Even with the play's meta aspect, Collins and Mitchell's performances are remarkably naturalistic, and they render M and W's relationship deeply lived-in and captivatingly authentic. In keeping with its title, It's Not What It Looks Like delivers a few unexpected turns and revelations, but it's no spoiler to say that this is a can't-miss show.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards