There’s a threat weighing on the two couples who inhabit a pleasant living room in Brenda Withers’s hilarious new play, Westminster, at the Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet through Sept. 1, though it’s never seen onstage. The problem begins when one couple, a scrappy, unprosperous pair named Krysten (Stacy Fischer) and Beau (Robert Kropf), bestows a feral rescue dog on their far more uptight, bougie friends Pia (Withers) and Tim (Jonathan Fielding). The dog is ostensibly a surprise gift, yet there’s an undercurrent of provocation to the gesture — it seems intended to upset Pia and Tim’s ordered, childless lifestyle and play on their social consciences.
Pia, who has known Krysten since childhood and treats her like a younger sister — Pia’s family took in Krysten, who came from an abusive home — steadfastly refuses to allow the dog inside. She’s not interested in taking on the responsibility of taming an untrained dog, but it’s also clear that the havoc the dog might wreak on her scrupulously furnished house is more than she can bear. The living room resembles a gray-and-beige showroom from a West Elm catalog.
In the process of fending off the growls, barks, bites, and unbridled enthusiasm of the dog, the four adults discuss a range of dog-related topics and reveal something of themselves. There’s the question of naming him, identifying the breed (he’s a mutt, but Pia suspects he’s a pit bull), housing and training him, and everything else that comes into play when expanding one’s household. Krysten and Beau have three rescue dogs already, and they claim to have given away this pup to spread the joy. They live like vagabonds, financially on the edge, and Beau has a bit of a MAGA air about him, particularly when it comes to the subject of guns and the suspicion of spousal abuse. Even so, the couple have enough counterculture traits between them (they’re vegetarians!) to complicate any stereotypical judgments. Fischer and Kropf make this pair especially interesting by holding back on the melodramatic tics: they reveal themselves nonchalantly, with subtle hints and occasional moments of pique.
Pia and Tim, on the other hand, are the main focus of Withers’s satire. Pia’s righteous, scolding attitude undercuts the rationality of her arguments, and Withers, who is a remarkably talented physical actor, gives a tour de force performance. She doesn’t turn Pia into a cartoon, but her nervous rat-a-tat delivery of lines takes the play to the edge of farce. Fielding, as Tim, is brilliantly comic as well. Tim is a milquetoast, but Fielding imbues him with impish charm, and he owns some of the play’s most amusing and ironic moments.
The four leads are the founding members of the Harbor Stage, an actor-run company in every way, from marketing to administration. There’s no director credited, yet they perform so fluidly, navigating the twists and rhythms of Withers’s 80-minute intermission-less play, that it presents itself as a seamless vision. It begins with a preposterous premise — the surprise gift of an out-of-control rescue dog — and it builds inevitably to an outrageous climax. The way this quartet works together, suspension of disbelief is automatic. Westminster is irresistibly entertaining.
The production is impeccable. Justin Lahue’s inspired living room set, plainly lit by resident lighting designer John R. Malinowski, is deceptively straightforward. It’s a classically proportioned space, with everything looking just-so and in place. But the room, and the invisible world offstage that surrounds it, are as much a character in the play as the two couples. It embodies the sense of threat from the dog’s behavior that the couples experience. That looming threat is the theme of the play, and it’s not unlike the right-wing, authoritarian populism that is at the forefront of today’s politics. The laughs in Westminster, named after the world-famous purebred dog show, are tinged with anxiety and horror.
The lion’s share of credit for this goes to Withers. The dog in Westminster reminded me of the goat in Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? — a symbolic absence that functions as a catalyst for the neuroses of all involved. Yet Withers accomplishes this without the arch dialogue of Albee’s absurdism. Despite their uncanny predicament, the characters in her play speak with natural voices and espouse everyday fears and judgments. What happens to them is thoroughly organic to who they are. That’s a neat trick, pulled off with the ease of a master magician. Westminster is terrific in the sense that it elicits terror and wonderment at the same time.
Catch it in its New England premiere and you’ll see the Harbor Stage Company at the peak of its powers.
Dog Day Afternoon
The event: Westminster, a play by Brenda Withers
The time: Though Sept. 1, Thursday through Saturday at 7 p.m.; Sunday at 5 p.m.
The place: Harbor Stage Company, 15 Kendrick Ave., Wellfleet
The cost: All seats $25 (except Aug. 16 pay-as-you-can, no advance sales) at harborstage.org or 508-349-6800
