1945. Walt Whitman Hospital on Long Island. Chester Bailey (Ephraim Birney) wanted to enlist. His mother wouldn’t let him. It was humiliating to walk around the neighborhood obviously healthy and out of uniform. He lost his only potential girlfriend because of it. Reserve work was secured at The Brooklyn Navy Yard, but – “There’s a war on and you still got your mom putting an apple in your lunch every day.” Fate finds the young man. A disturbed fellow worker attacks with an acetylene torch. Badly burned, Chester loses both eyes and both hands. (We see the actor whole.)
Reed Birney, foreground, Ephraim Birney at back
Dr. Philip Cotton (Reed Birney) is just a little too old to be drafted and has night blindness. He’s spending the war employed at VA mental facilities. Unlike most peers, this physician is concerned, patient and insightful. Chester is put in his care. Philip works under Henry, the kind of boss who makes cocktail parties mandatory. At one, he meets an attractive, flirty woman who turns out to be Henry’s wife. She gives Philip her number. He pockets it. Then his wife tells him she’s having an affair.
Chester Bailey is not at Whitman for physical injuries, all of which are healing. He has extreme cases of Phantom Limb and Phantom Eye Syndrome, feeling sensations in the removed limbs and organs as if still attached. His brain, continuing to get messages from nerves in the vicinity, holds onto a detailed map of what’s missing and even feels pain. Measuring brain activity when told to move one’s fingers, a patient’s cerebral cortex reacts as if they still existed. If he were told to look across a room, the brain would adjust accordingly. Scientists can explain neither of these phenomena. Almost half symptoms like these go away on their own.
Reed Birney, Ephraim Birney
Chester’s symptoms don’t abate. He’s convinced he still has his hands and eyes and is, in fact, improving. He describes a painting on the wall and a photo of Philip’s daughter proffered by the doctor as an experiment. We see him (in his mind’s eye) hold a glass. Philip suggests he throw it. Deadlock. The young man believes he’s being visited nightly by a girl he saw selling newspapers at a Pennsylvania Station before the tragedy. She’s now, he thinks, a nurse. “I’ll get outa here and we’ll go dancing at Luna Park.” (Coney Island) There’s sex.
“By definition he was delusional and delusional people can’t roam the streets,” Philip says regretfully. He treats Chester as if he can see and touch, yet periodically lays a trap. The patient appreciates his caregiver, but is wary of him. Shades of cat and mouse. At moments part of his brain seems to know the truth but can’t deal with it.
Both men are trying to recreate their lives. Philip is tired and discouraged. Something is missing. Chester is energized, in denial, and planning a future. Neither romantic life is – rational. Playwright Joseph Dougherty doesn’t make parallels as clear as they might be.
We go back and forth between the two men as they sit, circle, pause elsewhere and communicate. The fourth wall is intermittent. Transitions are fluid. Director Ron Lagomarsino offers a realistic, well paced scenario. The play is kept from being maudlin in part, by not showing visible outcome of the horrifying incident. This feels correct in light of Dougherty’s writing, but adds to keeping us at arm’s length, absorbed, but emotionally distanced. It appears to be a trade-off.
Ephraim Birney
Reed Birney has been a solid, reliable theater presence for some years. Philip’s kindness is as real as his depression and “battle” fatigue. Ephraim Birney is thoroughly, disarmingly convincing. Chester’s single outbreak shocks. (There’s no credit for a fight director, but this work is excellent.) The father and son actors work beautifully together.
Lighting Designer Brian MacDevitt handles emergence and fading with skill. Brendan Aarnes’s music is so integral, it seeps into consciousness.
The set by John Lee Beatty is marvelous. Above a minimally furnished hospital room are receding, metal gridwork arches (interspersed with lights) indicating Pennsylvania Station. (I first assumed the medical facility had been a repurposed factory.) A mirror at the back creates depth. On view are the two important locales in Chester’s brain.
Photos by Joan Marcus
Irish Repertory presents
Chester Bailey by Joseph Dougherty
Directed by Ron Lagomarsino
Irish Repertory Theatre
132 West 22nd Street
Through November 13, 2022
