And here is where I must warn you, dear readers, that while I always try to honor the Code of the Spoilers, there are certain aspects of this production that are revealed only by degrees. But to appreciate the greatness of Ms. Washburn’s accomplishment — and, yes, I just used the “g” word — you need to know about what’s waiting for you here in the blackest midnight of these characters’ souls.
Granted, there are visible clues as soon as you step into the Almeida. At the dead center of the theater is an immense, battered round table, with many, many chairs pulled up to it. It may be that you, as an audience member, will be seated in one of them. And if you are among such an elect, there may come a time when you may no longer recognize yourself, or those seated beside you. (This might be the point to mention that the gobsmacking surprises of décor and attire are by the set designer, Miriam Buether, and Fly Davis, who did the costumes.)
But there, I’ve said too much. What’s on entirely open view from the beginning is a totem pole and a huge animal hide (presumably a bear’s) nailed to the wall. Clearly, something primeval is on the prowl. And as the night wears on, and people get drunker and wearier and more wired, their imaginations will take them into a land that is sacred and profane, apocalyptic and eternal, where a gold-skinned god with a New Yawk accent tempts a man who believes in the sacredness of the constitution, and the institutions it protects.
The name of the man being tempted is … Well, if you’ve paid attention from the beginning, you’ll know it’s that same public servant who appeared to us — fleetingly, parenthetically — in the very first scene.
From the beginning you will also become acquainted with several other, seemingly irrelevant characters, the last previous tenants of this farmhouse: a father, a mother and their adopted Nigerian son. Pay close attention to that young man, whose name is Mark (the quietly charismatic Fisayo Akinade), for he holds the key to the play’s ultimate secret. Hint: it is not a political secret, or not exactly.
For as in her fabulous “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” — which traced the evolution of an episode from “The Simpsons” into a heroic, Homeric narrative for a Dark Ages of the future — Ms. Washburn is pondering our atavistic hunger to tell stories to make sense out of life. And she knows that when characters like those of “Shipwreck” are faced with what seems inexplicable to them, their so-called enlightened minds may find themselves wandering into primal, mythic realms — where there be dragons and demons and amoral Dionysiac gods.
Such fantasies — fueled in part by sleeplessness and drunkenness — draw from recesses of memory these characters haven’t looked into recently. Taking-off points in the play (which could still benefit from trimming) range from the Bible to “The Lord of the Rings,” from MTV music videos to contemporary YouTube loops. Such references inspire a teeming, eclectic visual vocabulary reflected in Luke Halls’s genre-blending video dreamscapes and the pregnant campfire spookiness of Jack Knowles’s lighting.
