Review: From Dust to Must? - a Review of "Bring Them Back"

Bring Them Back

Written and directed by David Willinger 

Presented by Crystal Field, Executive Director, Theater for the New City, at Theater for the New City

May 9-19th, 2024

Paul Korzinski and Carole Forman. Photo by Steven Pisano

Bring Them Back is a great new work by David Willinger featuring Carole Forman as Trudy and Paul Korzinski as Paul in a 90-minute play at Theater for the New City.

Son of a psychoanalyst, Paul is a playwright who is experiencing writer's block in the worst way. He can't sleep, he's lost interest in eating, he's constipated on every front, and with good reason: death surrounds him. Every other phone call delivers a message that yet another family member or friend has checked out, and he's left reeling.

On the day after Yom Kippur, Paul is desperately experimenting with Kabbalistic ritual to bring back the deceased. This, he hopes, will help him move past his remorse and guilt in not giving due attention to the living when they were alive.

Paul is the son of a psychoanalyst, exploring the feelings of a man looking backwards in time in a post-pandemic world, morose and conflicted. Korzinski projects his confusion adeptly.

Old family friend Trudy, forcefully played by the enigmatic Carole Forman, projects light into the stagnant situation, though she's not in favor of Paul's use of hocus-pocus. Trudy visits and supports, cajoles and comforts Paul, whom she has known since he was a tyke. She prefers using food and caring, as well as reliance on his many writers' reference books, referencing Virginia Woolf quotes and T. S. Eliot lines to end Paul's preoccupation with the deceased.

Trudy knows that caring for Paul keeps her alive, and she's nowhere near ready to drop dead. Forman, as Trudy, is an enigmatic composite of every Jewish woman anyone has ever known, inhabiting the colors of her generation and times. Trudy helps pave the way for Paul to move past his inertia and construct a play. Caring for Paul gives her life, and Trudy's a fully present character, seeking to live life to its fullest.

Paul Korzinski and Carole Forman. Photo by Steven Pisano

Paul, unpracticed in invoking a golem, somehow cracks the code, and the dead come back in droves. Everyone appears, via projected film: disagreeable family, friends, old university colleagues in hell, enemies, friends from the gym - even people who crossed Paul's path at the same intersection.

This occurs in such a way that we, the audience, watch - as Paul's mind begins to become unstuck, flushed free by the reappearance of everyone he's ever known.

Two characters on stage and a cast of nearly a hundred 'deceased' made for a memorable opening night.

When the lights came up after the 90-minute piece, many of the 'dead' were present in the audience, an eerie ending to an evening of dark comedy. Seeing many of 'the spirits' in the flesh was a reassuring end to a thought-provoking evening.

David Willinger's Bring Them Back employs film and projection in its masterful presentation. The realistic set design was a team effort. Lighting design by Alexander Bartenieff helped to conjure up the sense of otherworldliness. Solid sound design with original music by James Yaiullo brought clarity to the voices of the deceased from beyond. Willinger, with film editor Roy Chang and a creative collaborative team, conjured the film projection, an interactive uniqueness of the production, successfully stage-managed by Christopher Bello.

-Yvonne Tutelli