Nilaja Sun (Teresa Castracane)
Written and performed by Nilaja Sun, the one-woman show Pike St. doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. It tells the story of a poor Puerto Rican family in New York and their preparations for an impending hurricane, as well as their struggles taking care of their severely mentally disabled child. Despite some dramatic promise, a lack of focus leads to a piece that doesn’t add up to a coherent whole.
It takes an enormous amount of talent to pull off a one-person show at all, and Nilaja Sun is fully up to the task. She has more than the required energy, and directs it exactly where it needs to go. She makes her many characters distinct, crisp and often hilarious, and though her vocal work occasionally muddles them together, her careful physicality ensures that that it’s rarely unclear who is speaking.
It’s an impressive feat given the half dozen or so characters she puts on over course of the action. Where the show falters is in the script. Pike St. is at heart a straightforward slice-of-life narrative with most of the conflict revolving around three main characters: Evelyn, her brother Manny (home from fighting in Afghanistan), and their father Papi.
Unfortunately, the moments of character development that push those arcs forward often feel rushed. The script can’t seem to decide who and what to spend time on, and interesting threads taper off with little significant payoff. A scene where Manny confronts a local Muslim shopkeeper in a clear bout of PTSD-induced paranoia is a standout, but afterwards Manny’s mental state is barely referenced aside from a few moments of raising his voice. The climax of the show seems to go by in a flash as all the dangling character threads try to resolve themselves at once, and it leaves a feeling of wanting to have seen more from them once they do.
This insubstantial feeling also comes across in the greater tone of the show. It flirts with a vague aura of magical realism connected to the spiritual healing practices of Evelyn and Manny’s late mother, but never commits itself fully, so the more esoteric moments come off as isolated compared to the down-to-earth character interactions that make up the bulk of the play. The coming hurricane, for example, is initially framed as an apocalyptic presence rich with metaphor for the family’s struggles, but it ends up forgotten for much of the show, and when it finally comes it lacks the gravitas it should have.
These problems may lie in the format of the one-woman show. Nilaja does a stellar job building and maintaining her characters, but her story would fit just fine in a more traditional format with multiple actors. This begs the question: why make it a one person show at all? One person shows tend to be narrow affairs, usually zoomed in on the personal life of the performer or of a single character. In attempting a full play with a full cast of characters all by herself, Sun is forced to condense the narrative in ways that leave it wanting. This is a shame because the characters she has created and their stories have great potential, but it is, for the moment, unrealized.
Pike Street is at Woolly Mammoth Theatre until April 23rd. Tickets can be purchased here.
