The Great God Pan is a fine display of the quality and professionalism that the RC Players can demonstrate. I had the benefit of being able to watch the director go over notes on Thursday before the rehearsal and see the care and craft that goes into a performance like this. I saw the kind of unpretentious attention to detail and critical analysis that leads — in any discipline: writing, theater, math, history, construction — to real quality in the final product. It’s easy to forget the importance of certain roles, such as lighting or stage management, which, when done well, as they were, go unnoticed. I’m glad I was there, and it was also very interesting to see notes being read about a performance that I hadn’t seen and didn’t know anything about, and then to see the show and connect the notes and suggestions to the play itself.
The play opens with an old primary school friend (who happens to be gay) of our protagonist talking with him for the first time since their childhood. They are presumed to be in their mid-ish-thirties now. He tells him that he was abused by his father when he was younger, and is mounting a lawsuit against him. He wants to know if our protagonist remembered his — the friend’s — father doing anything to him at the time.
It’s heavy subject matter, but the play deals with it tastefully. It does so by rarely dealing with it directly. We see him with his family and long-time girlfriend, with the idea of past abuse hanging over everything, adding depth and subtlety to each interaction. At no point is shock used to cheap effect. At no point is it preachy or proselytizing. No description of the event to audience gasps. No easy invocation of a head-shaking audience solidarity over the evils of molestation. Crying onstage is difficult to pull off, and it can easily break the spell, but in the one scene when the protagonist does, it felt — to me — earned.
The performances were all great, and a few stood out in particular. The actor playing the mother gave an incredibly believable performance while not sacrificing a sharp comic timing, and the character of the psychiatric client portrayed anxiety in a way that felt true.
In case I’ve given the wrong impression, the play was not about abuse. Nor is it about sexuality. More than anything else, it’s a meditation on memory and identity. The main character vehemently denies that anything that happened to him so long ago can’t possible affect who he is now. Home-video-style recordings used to represent memory are integrated into the show. The protagonist visits and old babysitter who has begun to forget. A side story involving a client of the girlfriend, who is a psychiatrist, was disconnected, but the strength of the performance and how interesting it was carried it.
I fully recommend seeing it, and luckily, if you live in Ann Arbor or you’ll be here over summer, there’s still a chance to if you haven’t yet. The Redbud Theater in Ann Arbor will be putting on a performance on May 29th, 30th, and 31st. The RC Players will be putting on a show called Picasso on April 10th, 11th, and 12th, which I can only expect will be very good.
