Review: Summer Shorts: “Napoleon in Exile,” “The Mulberry Bush,” and “Doubtless”

When watching several short plays in succession, as I had the pleasure to do last Friday at 59E59’s annual installment of their Summer Shorts Series, it is an involuntary reflex as an audience member to try to sew together the shorts, to try to figure out what connects them as a larger piece of theater. The stage design is minimal, and three large wooden blocks transform seamlessly from couch, to park bench, to Church pew, with the aid of some throw pillows, fake bushes, and clever lighting design, amongst other subtle scene shifts. But such stage sleight of hand, if you will, fades quickly into the background, as powerful, disturbing, and thought provoking performances enter front and center. Take Evelyn and her son Corey in Daniel Reitz’s Napoleon in Exile, directed by Paul Schnee. It’s wintertime, and Evelyn, played with exhausted grace by Henny Russell, has come home to find that her son has far exceeded his time limit on Minecraft, the online gaming universe, and has once again neglected his chores. He launches into a rant on his progress in the game and why he couldn’t stop, which I am hilariously familiar with thanks to my frequent care of a loquacious eleven year old with a similar fondness for the game. But wait, Evelyn is past middle age, and Corey isn’t in grade school, he’s twenty-five. And something else isn’t quite right. Evelyn is weary, but tenderly practiced in her communication with Corey (played by Will Dagger): “I feel…”, “I worry…” Corey is far less tender, and when he pushes her buttons again and again (“Did you take your Lexapro?”), it seems the only explanation for her calm responses is that she’s so very used to this. Corey has autism, and though he’s charming, funny, and intelligent, it’s very hard for him to hold down a job, even at a fast food place, and so he’s perfectly content playing video games on his mom’s couch, with a mom who unconditionally loves and understands him.