Days and Nights Within
Image © Lisa Ebright
Chicago Tribune, Jan 31, 1986 Ellen McLaughlin’s “Days and Nights Within,” currently receiving its Chicago premiere engagement in a production by the Remains Theatre Ensemble at the Organic Theater, is the eeriest of love tales, one set within the claustrophobic confines of an espionage interrogation behind the Iron Curtain.
It’s 1950, and Elsa Weber (Amy Morton), a young mother and now West German resident, returns to her East Berlin origins in search of a missing friend. She is at once arrested, and, like a lot of people in those dark early days of the Cold War, seemingly swallowed up forever. She spends the next two years–the span of the play–deprived of proper food, adequate heating, clothing and sometimes routine hygiene. Her only human contact is the daily, incessant rounds with her Interrogator (William L. Petersen), a man so pinstriped and bland that it is hard for her to consider him little more than a hapless fellow victim of the communist bureacracy.
In a dozen or so scenes, performed without intermission, Elsa gradually deteriorates, first losing hope, then self-esteem and finally almost all of her will. Through monologues and dream sequences, we’re shown some of the strange psychological landscapes traversed by a caged animal, ranging from her desire to switch roles with her questioner as well as to waltz with him.
To McLaughlin’s credit, she is trying to go beyond the built-in hooks of a conventional interrogation drama. There’s very little information provided about Elsa’s life or family and none at all about the interlocutor’s. Once the matter of the early ’50s and East Germany are introduced, they’re dropped. This struggle probably could take place behind the walls of many a modern state police system.
Unfortunately, the very lack of references–both political and personal –robs the play of interest, suspense and finally purpose. After a while, it begins to resemble an ugly piece of titillating voyeurism. To say that societies ought not do such things seems as pointless as saying that they won’t.
Nevertheless, the play can be a gripping vehicle for its players, and here the Remains troupe is well-prepared. Petersen, in his first stage role since starring in the movie, “To Live and Die in L.A.,” plays superbly against type: businesslike, timid, vulnerable, in awe of someone smarter and probably better than he is. At times, he’s like a frightened schoolboy about to make his first erotic advances: At one point, clearly in love with Elsa, he stands near her just after she passes out, holding his hand above her head briefly before turning away in terror. Sensational.
Even so, it is Morton’s play. Her trembling voice and gaunt, hangdog features, combined with her instinct for ferocious indignation and inner fury, make her a perfect Elsa, weaving near the precipice of sanity and exquisitely unshakeable in her moral outrage. Even when she disintegrates into a childlike lunatic, she manages both feminity and an awesome dignity.
Dennis Zacek’s direction is swift and crisp, making great use of Patrick Kerwin’s stark platform set and the evocative beams from lighting designer Robert Shook, whose shafts turn into towering pyramids thanks to the cavernous heights of the Organic.
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