THE WHALE at Playwrights Horizons

Last night I saw The Whale at Playwrights Horizons.

It was wildly different from basically anything else I've seen, yet at the same time, it's just a regular play. It is really just a play about a incredibly dysfunctional family, but the father weighs 600 pounds.

I will issue a spoiler alert now, if that sort of thing matters to you. It is hard to talk about this play without explaining things you don't know going in.

Charlie is the man at the center of this piece. He is morbidly obese and is a essay writing teacher of online classes. Early on we learn he will probably die by the end of the week, and sure enough, he does. But not without a lot of shit hitting the fan.

He is pleasuring himself when, coincidentally a Mormon missionary comes by. Charlie starts to have what seems to be some sort of heart failure and Elder Thomas comes in and Charlie insists that the only way to help him is to read this essay on Moby Dick. Elder Thomas does and Charlie is back to his normal state.

Charlie's only friend, Liz comes in shortly after and is a nurse; she takes care of Charlie because he refuses to go to the hospital. Charlie tells Liz that he wants to call Ellie, his daughter who is now 17 and whom he hasn't seen since she was 2.

Charlie was married and had Ellie. When she was two, he met this man named Alan and they fell in love. Charlie left his wife Mary to be with Alan. He had very little communication with Mary and Ellie from there on out. Ellie now hates everyone and has a blog in which she posts pictures and horrible writings about the people in her life and how she wishes great harm onto them. Ellie goes to Charlie's house and he offers her all the money he has saved from teaching (in the range of $120,000) if she will just let him get to know her a little. She comes each day and is horrible and rude, but eventually finds some love in her heart for her father.

Charlie's partner Alan died a few years prior to this, which is what spun Charlie into this spiral towards obesity. Alan was a Mormon but broke away from the church until one day his father asked him to come back and hear this one sermon. He did and after that day he shut down and refused to eat and slowly killed himself. We find out about half way through the play that Liz was Alan's sister.

The biggest thematic element of the show is this constant reference to Jonah and the Whale and Moby Dick. Elder Thomas keeps coming back to see Charlie and eventually gets information about the sermon that Alan heard, which was a big mystery until now. Alan was told the story of Jonah and the Whale and made to believe that because he loved Charlie, God would punish him. There is a lot of animosity towards Elder Thomas, but it turns out he is having his own issues with the church and has actually faked his current mission after being kicked off his original, real mission. He just wants to help someone, and make a difference - a feeling that was not shared with his original mission partner. He is trying to help Charlie, but in the end cannot.

Charlie is not saved, but in his final moments he has Ellie read him that essay on Moby Dick, which it turns out she wrote when she was in 8th grade and it is the only thing he had of her's for many years and that is why it brought him such comfort.

That was probably a really confusing summary, but there are just so many parts to this play that it is difficult to explain entirely without taking an hour and 50 mins like the running time of the show. Haha. That was a very effective tactic for this play - no intermission. You are forced to watch the demise of this man and all these people in his life for almost 2 hours without any break.

It was well crafted with surprises throughout and the production was fantastic; the acting, great - particularly Shuler Hensley who played Charlie.

I even bought the script because it is a really thought provoking play and I might want to do one of Elder Thomas' monologues for an upcoming audition.

And one last thought - there was a great line poking fun at The Book of Mormon that was subtle, but very effective.

Liz: You grew up in Iowa and they sent you to Idaho for your mission?
Elder Thomas: Yeah, I don't know. Some of my friends got to go to Los Angeles. A few went to Africa. It's--fine.