Very rarely do I attend theater and become agonizingly bored. Rajiv Joseph’s play Describe the Night is one such example. I could not recommend this to anyone.
Visiting Chicago, this seemed a sure bet. The play won an Obie Award as Best New American Play in 2018. I saw Mr. Joseph’s excellent Bengal Tigers at the Baghdad Zoo on Broadway. That play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama. The reliable Steppenwolf Theatre Company was presenting the Chicago premiere. None of that matters. The suffering was real.
Describe the Night is a serious and ambitious work. Tom Stoppard comes to mind with its huge scope, intellectual ambitions and dark comedic moments. The subject matter is certainly interesting and timely. The play spans the twentieth century from 1920 through 2010. The plot is intentionally convoluted and aggressively overstuffed with ridiculous moments possibly meant to scream “clever”. Maybe that’s too harsh but the shit is piled on thick.
Isaac Babel is a famous writer and one of the non-fictional people in this play. Truth telling is frowned upon in his native Russia. He worked for a wire service in the 1920s and covered Russia’s invasion of Poland. His writings lead to trouble. This play is about many things including the persecution of dissidents who are dangerous to the state and what happens to them and their works.
Babel was accused of being a Trotskyite and a French spy. (At one point his wife leaves him for Paris, one of a thousand subplots.) He was executed and much of his output destroyed. A journal did survive and winds up with a modern day Russian reporter and a car rental agent.
Along the way there are scenes containing Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 2010 crash of an aircraft over Russia carrying Polish government officials. Interspersed are comedic elements and relationship issues.
During one scene a soup is served by a caricature of an old lady. Qureshi is enjoyed by taking out leeches from the bowl and attaching them to your fingers. After they are engorged you place them back into the broth and eat. That soup also sucks (couldn’t resist, sorry).
There are plenty of obvious nods to what is happening in the news right now. Russian invasions. Demonizing journalists. Suppressing truths. Targeting unhelpful narratives. Banning books. The subject matter was not the issue for me. The aching dullness of having to endure a confusing and plodding marathon became my oppressor. Unlike Babel I was free to leave. At least that remains true, for now.
Describe the Night is running through April 9, 2023.