Infected would be a great show if it had a better script. The new offering at Upstream Theatre is by Albert Ostermaier, an award-winning German playwright who taught a semester at Washington University a few years ago. Upstream’s artistic director Phillip Boehm did the translation.
It’s a one-man show with Alan Knoll as the unnamed man. The stock market trader is in medical isolation because of some terrible disease, also unnamed. It could be argued that it’s unnamed because it’s a malaise of the soul, but there are also physical manifestations. There’s a rush of words from the trader, a cascade of explanations and distracted discussions and disjointed observations. He’s a man obsessed with his work but notably unsuccessful at it. At least unsuccessful recently; apparently there have been things like private schools for his little girl and suggestions of exotic vacations, the latter nixed by him because he couldn’t continue to work during the vacation without reliable, fast internet connections. “I never get sick,” he says repeatedly as he coughs and staggers. But now he’s sick indeed, he’s roared through his wife’s money in his search for financial gains, and it appears that there’s another really big problem as well. Fun and games at the old ball park, as Mike Shannon would say.
Knoll and director Patrick Siler have made the man a larger-than-life character, vividly shown with manic energy. Whether it’s the result of his own personality or the consequence of his illness makes no difference. It works well and Knoll roars through it like a pro.
The soundscape, to use Upstream’s phrase, almost a second character in the show, is provided by David A. N. Jackson using percussion and musical instruments plus a few other objects. It becomes a nearly-living thing; to call it charming is not an overstatement.
Somewhere between a modern hospital room and a minimalist picture frame is Patrick Huber’s set. No hospital bed, but almost everything is white, the wires of modern health care present but unobtrusive, and the picture frame visuals continue through the floor but in a different fashion.
So it looks good, it sounds good, and it’s well acted. The problem is that we’re left puzzling about almost everything. Is this a psychosis? Is his pain psychosomatic? How much of this is the product of a fevered brain? Did he really do the things he says he did? Is he despicable? What’s real?
We lack a reason to get engaged beyond the three components listed above. We certainly lack a reason to care. Lots of good work expended on words that don’t seduce an audience. And isn’t that what theater is really about?
Infected
through March 25
Upstream Theater
Kranzberg Arts Center
501 N. Grand
314-669-6382