Stage Review - The Niceties (Lakewood Playhouse)

Stage Review - The Niceties
Presented By: Lakewood Playhouse - Lakewood, WA
Show Run: May 31 - June 16, 2024
Date Reviewed: Friday, May 31, 2024 (Opening Night)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman

History….it is a topic that has been top of mind for a lot of us over the past few years. Not just history, there’s nothing that can really be done about the events that actually transpired over however many years that we’re talking about in any particular conversation, but rather the teaching of it. In general terms, it’s a difficult task to teach something so broad, but at the same time has so much detail, detail that is often required to give context to the broader timelines. So, how does one choose what, exactly, to teach? Further, from what perspective should the history be taught? Further still, if we’re inclined to go strictly by the facts, and by facts I’m referring to things that can be found in primary sources, what happens when history is taught with only some of the facts? This is complicated even more when we consider that first person accounts (writings and other such evidence) may be incomplete. I’m referring to something specifically brought up in Eleanor Burgess’ play The Niceties, which is currently running on stage at Lakewood Playhouse through June 16 in a production directed by Michelle Matlock. The issue at hand above is that poor, or otherwise repressed, populations do not have the same access to education, or for that matter the tools of writing and recording, to preserve their perspective as a first person, or primary source, account. Assuming that the intention of those teaching history is to provide an education based on the perspective of all parties (which, unfortunately, we know largely is not the case), information is going to be missing, students will never learn all sides of a situation, and as a result they will be worse off for it, as are those whose voices will never be heard. That’s the conundrum that The Niceties puts in front of its audience, how do we capture all of history when we’re held to a standard that doesn’t allow us to include what we know to be true, but are largely unable to prove it?

I’ll start with what I like about the Niceties. I like the idea of it, the fact that the history we learn is largely based on what perspective it’s being taught from. I also like that the Niceties calls out a general lack of critical thinking in our society, that many trust what they’re told or taught, without considering the view or agenda of those teaching it. Note that I’m not referring to the teachers here, necessarily, but rather the administrations that choose textbooks whose writers determine what, out of all of our collective history, is important to learn. Teachers do have a certain responsibility here as well, but more on that later. The Niceties is a good concept, the story of a white professor at a liberal arts college in Connecticut who enters into a debate with a black female student about how history is recorded, and how perspective flavors how it is taught and learned.

Next, I’ll move on to what I love about The Niceties at Lakewood Playhouse. First off, the acting. The professor, Janine Bosko, is played by Laurie O’Brien and the student Zoe Reed by Danielle Shope. Both of these actors play these roles passionately and confidently, fully in character and bought into what each stands for, regardless of the personal viewpoints of the actors. Both Laurie and Danielle understand the purpose of their characters, and they masterfully navigate the zigs and the zags of a conversation that starts innocuously enough, but soon goes completely off the rails. Danielle’s Zoe is angry, angry at the injustice in the world and her feeling of powerlessness to do anything to make it better, but that won’t stop her from trying. She’s quick to hold Laurie’s Janine to account and Zoe is clearly an intelligent student, able to match wits with her older professor. Laurie, on the other hand, presents Janine almost as a victim of her generation, meaning that she’s been locked into a way of thinking for so long, whether it’s how to document and report on history, or the opinions she holds on minority oppression and repression, and that it’s challenging to contemplate a different point of view. Janine gets angry as well, but her anger is more on the defensive, a lashing out at what she doesn’t entirely understand. These are excellent performances, from two actors who know their craft, are able to manage a lot of dialogue and are skilled at stepping out of their comfort zones.

The design of the show is also very well done. Maggie Knott’s set definitely feels like a professor’s office, and being in the round, a static desk and chair can make it difficult for the entire audience to feel like the show is directed toward them. Michelle Matlock’s answer to that is movement, having bookshelves placed in each corner of the theatre and Janine going to each of them at different times throughout the show forces movement and the use of different angles. Additionally, and especially when the conversation gets heated, her actors move around the stage quite a bit. On the lighting side, I have to say that subtle but effective is the order of the day. Alonna Hall’s work here isn’t flashy, but slight lighting changes when the mood of the conversation shifts, or when the topic, or speaker, changes, it’s enough to keep the audience engaged, pointing out that “Hey, there’s something to pay attention to here!” The entire design meets the challenges of the Lakewood “in the round” format, and allows the entire audience to feel part of this thinker of a play.

And yes, it is a thinker. The Niceties doesn’t just talk about history, who writes it, and what is included in it, it also dives into nuances like bias versus prejudice. That’s not something that is brought up explicitly, but in the generational disparity between Janine and Zoe, much of what the professor is accused of can be distilled down to bias rather than sheer bigotry or racism. Granted, neither is good here, but from a generational sense, bias can be something that is subconscious, something that may be the result of years of ingrained behavior. Zoe could stand to give Janine some slack, a consideration that it might be difficult for her to grasp some of this new information. But, on the other hand, and this is where I have an issue with The Niceties, Janine does not seem to want to try, and by not trying she’s becoming the thing Zoe is accusing her of being. The Janine character may very well be the worst highly regarded history professor out there. She doesn’t understand that there is a responsibility to nurture her students, and to understand that there are other views of history than those in textbooks. Her method of mentorship is addressed a bit in the play, but it all breaks down when she’s viewed in the context of her credentials. She’s also not open to discussion despite what she claims, and while Zoe can surely be faulted for using her anger to drive her behavior, an anger that’s largely not her own, Janine falls to the student’s level, and the conversation quickly becomes less about content and more about personal attacks. And yes, it’s a mirror for the dialogue that occurs on a daily basis in America, where opinions are for the weak, replaced by alternative sets of facts which imply rightness and wrongness, but I feel like there’s a missed opportunity here to point out that this is not how our discourse should go, and perhaps provide an example of how it should. It would be disappointing to see this behavior out of a highly esteemed history professor, and the fact that this is Janine makes the character itself seem a bit disingenuous, the personality skewed just to make the story work. And the same can be said about Zoe, a student at this expensive liberal arts school who doesn’t seem to understand choices and repercussions, the characterization at times feels forced to fit into the narrative. After all, it’s no surprise that the two of them can’t have an honest discourse, when the entire thing begins dishonestly, which is a departure from how a similar conversation would go between an actual student as intelligent as Zoe and a professor of history as highly regarded as Janine . All of this is not to say The Niceties is not impactful, it is, and the way these characterizations are done, regardless of whether my experience tells me that neither one would behave entirely as they do here, doesn’t just make the audience question the larger issue here, that of history and perspective, but also what would cause either one of these characters to say what they do, when they do.

If you’re looking for a happy, feel good night at the theatre that isn’t going to ask a lot of you, it’s clear that The Niceties is not for you. This play demands a lot of its audience. It’ll make you think, not just about the history that you’ve been taught, and why it’s not truly a complete, but also the reason why the particular things you learned were deemed the only important things that transpired in our wide history. Where is the other perspective and why isn’t it taught? What is our responsibility to make sure that those whose voices couldn’t be heard then are heard now, even when we don’t have any pure evidence of those voices even existing. How do we include what we know to be true in our history even if we can’t prove it by our generally accepted rules of research and documentation? Should we all be held accountable for our biases, and to what extent? What is the impact of the socioeconomic disparity that disproportionally affects people of color and that is perpetuated by our own behaviors and how can we effect change to combat that? These are some of the questions that you may come out of The Niceties asking. I’m not a fan of some of the construction of the story, most notably the accuracy of behavior in the characterizations, but I am a fan of the idea of The Niceties, and its vision. In addition to that, I’m a huge fan of this production and more than anything the two actors that put all of themselves into these performances and make The Niceties an impactful piece of theatre.

The Niceties runs on stage at Lakewood Playhouse through June 16. For more information, including tickets, visit https://www.lakewoodplayhouse.org/. Note that this play has some mature themes and language and may not be suitable for all audiences.