Gail Thomas (Photo by David Haverty)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Rogue Machine
Through September 1
RECOMMENDED
Gail Thomas’s intimate solo show, now being presented, appropriately enough, at the Matrix’s living-room-sized Henry Murray Stage, is a step-by-step recapitulation of her experiences battling cancer. Under the direction of Dan Oliverio, Thomas relates her story with intensely personal — and surprisingly funny — specificity.
Thomas was a practicing lawyer who moved from Oklahoma to New York to pursue a career as a writer and performer — an intrepid transition that took some guts. In fact, the most appropriate way to describe her is with the somewhat archaic word “spunky.” A compressed ball of energy, Thomas has grit, along with a masterly recall of autobiographical detail and the kind of humor that derives from her willingness to share her fears and foibles, bravely and baldly.
Speaking of baldness, one of Thomas’s most amusing anecdotes is her cheeky decision, after chemo, to post a Craigslist ad —“Bald girl seeking romance.” She gets a large number of replies ranging from the hilarious to the moving. Oh, she also gets a dick pic.
Patient 13 was originally four separate stories workshopped at various storytelling venues, and Thomas doesn’t quite redress the scattershot nature of her narrative, which initially seems a bit lopsided. She dwells laboriously on her relationship with an emotionally inaccessible boyfriend who, during the months that they are together, oddly refuses to acknowledge that they are actually dating.
While picnicking with said boyfriend on a hike, she receives a call from her oncologist with bad news. Her boyfriend irritably remarks, “Did you have to take that call now?” Thomas, who describes herself as loathing confrontation, ignores his blatant insensitivity — for now. However, his mounting thoughtlessness ultimately rankles. Newly self-confident after battling cancer, she happily ditches the guy.
The main business of the show comes a bit belatedly — namely, Thomas’s participation in a cutting-edge FDA approved study about the effects of psilocybin, the active psychotropic agent in magic mushrooms, on cancer survivors.
As “Patient 13” in that study, Thomas —a midst the swirling, shifting colors of Rachel Ann Manheimer’s lighting design — recreates her laboratory-monitored “trip” in hallucinatory detail — a transformational experience, well rendered.
As Thomas reports, eighty percent of the experiment’s participants experienced a profound reduction in their anxiety and depression for at least six months. For Thomas, the effects of a single dose on her mood and general optimism have lasted for 12 years and counting. Studies about medical applications of psychedelics are still in their infancy, but Thomas’s anecdotal account leaves us eager to learn more.
Her ultimate epiphany — that we might as well have fun while awaiting inevitable death — may seem simplistic by any profound philosophical standards. But her message is delivered with such off-the-cuff charm that we take it very much to heart.
The Henry Murray Stage in the Matrix Theatre. Fri., 8 pm; Sat., 3 pm, Sun., 1 pm, thru Sept. 1. https://www.roguemachinetheatre.org/ Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission.
