My Favorite Suicide
Reviewed by Stephen Fife
Saudade Theatre with Colectivo 84
Through November 3
When I see a play like My Favorite Suicide by Portuguese playwright Mickaël de Oliveira (translated by Maria Inês Marques), it makes me aware of how U.S.A.-centric I am, despite my attempts to expand my awareness of international work. It’s similar to how sensitive we are to the accents of others, without being able to hear our own. Where drama is concerned, our American bias is toward shows with spectacle (big musicals) and plays with emotional intimacy and rawness, especially those from “underserved populations” (black, gay, Latinx). A show like Angels in America combines both these strands while also incorporating aspects of the Theater of Ideas, more popular in Europe than here.
My Favorite Suicide is from this last category, as Oliveira plays around with ideas of fate, self-determination and many “big questions.” The play begins with four actors engaging in a game of chance with cards. The scene suddenly changes to “a cabin in the woods,” where a woman (Liliana de Castro) has asked three friends (Joy Brunson, Diogo Martins, Filipe Valle Costa) to join her. The woman then tells her friends that she intends to commit suicide. She makes it clear that she is healthy and not depressed; she simply has decided to end her life, and she would like her friends to help be “intermediaries” between her death and her relatives. This is followed by a lot of conversation, including a strange summing up of the woman’s arrival in this town and what her friends thought about her at first, as well as how their view of her has changed. This in turn is interrupted by a loud knock at the cabin door. I won’t disclose what happens next except to say that it’s not a food delivery service, and that the world outside the cabin is faring even worse than the people inside.
Both the play’s title and its arbitrary interruption of scenes reminds me of the work of surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel, especially his masterpieces The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. Both of those also dealt with the way that civilized people deny the truths about their lives — especially the omnipresence of danger and death — in order to service their appetites and maintain the illusion of happiness.
Certainly there is a dreamlike feeling throughout My Favorite Suicide, suggested first by the eight or so potted trees onstage to represent the forest surrounding the cabin, and then by the original music from Drum and Lace, staccato bursts that are second cousins to Bernard Herrmann’s famous score from Psycho. This dreamlike sense of a fluid reality is provocative, and I kept waiting for a payoff that would bring home what the playwright was getting at and elevate this play from a curiosity into something substantial. But it never came.
What’s missing is the humor and the humanity that underscored all of Bunuel’s work, as well as the compassion that was the flipside of his scorn. As it stands, the dialogue here is flat and abstract, revealing little beyond the literal statements each character makes. While the ideas that Oliveira is contemplating show great potential for development, he forgot to create characters who could compel us to go on a journey with them. Or maybe I’m just too American to get his point.
Speaking of which: Oliveira subtitles his work “an American play,” and there are a few mentions of America in the dialogue, including the suicidal main character’s mention that she came to this town “from the South” (though without any accent). Later on, during descriptions of offstage events, we are told that the racist president and all his followers have been destroyed, along with pretty much everyone else — yet there has been no talk of politics up to then, nor do we hear any afterwards. For that matter, the title My Favorite Suicide suggests a very warped Bob Hope movie or screwball comedy, but the play itself has none of these traits. For those of us who had some personal experience with suicide or who lost friends in this manner, such incongruity can seem glib and offensive.
In any case, nothing in this play hit home for me on a gut level, which I know is a very American thing to say, but it’s why I go to the theater. I do, however, wish all the best to Saudade, the only Portuguese theatre company in this country. This is their second presentation, and they seem like lovely people with only the best of intentions. I hope they have a great future ahead of them.
Anthony Meindl’s Actors Workshop, 905 Cole Ave., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7:30 p.m.; no show Fri., Oct. 25; Sat., Oct. 26, 3 p.m.; through Nov. 3. www.saudadetheatre.org/my-favorite-suicide. Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission.
