A couple sits down to dinner in their small basement apartment. He is unemployed. She has just landed a temporary position at a tech company. Mary cannot reveal what the job is because of a non-disclosure agreement. She is nervous getting back into the workforce. “It was easy to sit at home and be, like, fuck it.” That’s the state of the union in 2021 as presented in the play Sin Eaters.
Derek doesn’t want to go back to catering but money is in short supply. They desperately want to escape this basement dwelling. Upstairs is a person suffering from PTSD of some sort. These two seem to be a relatively well adjusted couple. It’s just the lack of gainful employment keeping them down in their current state.
Mary heads to work and we learn that she is a content scrubber for an internet site. She’s been hired to flag pornography, gore, racism, hate speech, torture and much, much more. The images to be reviewed are relentless. The sheer mass takes a toll on Mary’s psyche. She doesn’t really let Derek in on the extent, only telling him the job is “challenging.”
There have been a number of recent plays which cover this terrain. Russian Troll Farm also concerned itself with similar employees. Sin Eaters, however, is more concerned about the impact on home than the workplace. The material to process is grueling and thankless. Then the unthinkable happens. Mary sees a very disturbing video and believes a crime was committed. Does she report it?
Bi Jean Ngo portrays Mary. The most interesting aspect of this character is her unreliability. She doesn’t trust him. He doesn’t trust her either for that matter. There are secrets looming, some of which are spelled out and others which are hinted at. As a viewer, I trusted neither of them which kept me interested in the plot.
David M. Raine plays the everyday guy yet mysteriously unknowable Derek. The performance is grounded in realism which nicely offsets an increasingly jarring turn to the phantasmagoric. I cannot say the balance between realism and eerieness was right on under Matt Pfeiffer’s direction. The ending in particular is very strong (and intensely off-putting in the best possible way). The visual details seemed overcooked, however, so the scene lost some of its power.
I can say that the staging, variety of camera angles and easy scene changes were very well done. Anna Moench’s play feels like a trip through a fun house. There are twists and turns. The mirrors where we see can ourselves and the images that will be distorted. Your mind starts to play tricks on you. Fear creeps in to join anxiety. There’s no telling which direction that combination will take you. That’s the edge we are asked to traverse in Sin Eaters.
Ms. Moench gently touches on the play’s themes but vivid spookiness (and revolting unseen imagery) is what drives the entertainment factor. Many will not enjoy this play due to its content. Some sections lag as we contemplate Mary’s evolving state of mind. And what about Derek’s? Evaluated as a whole unit, Sin Eaters is imperfect like its characters (and, by extension, us). Sin Eaters is also wildly paranoid which makes you pay attention.
Sin Eaters is being presented by South Philadelphia’s Theatre Exile through February 28, 2021.