Reviews

• “Wink” is bursting with dark humor

  Sofie is unhappy. Her cat Wink has gone missing, and it's tearing her apart. Her husband Gregor is unconcerned, suggesting Wink went on a little walkabout, the way cats sometimes do. "He's an indoor cat," she hisses at him, and asks Gregor to say the cat's name, because "I can hear in your voice how much you hate him." If Sofie knew just how much Gregor hates the cat (or hates loving the cat, or loves hating the cat) and how he has expressed his antipathy toward his wife's prized pet, she would jump out of her skin. And she already has a hard time keeping in it as it is.

  In Jen Silverman's play, also called Wink, now its world premiere production at Marin Theatre Company, everything and everyone is decidedly off-kilter, yet for the most part, no one treats the strange goings-on as anything out of the ordinary. When Sofie, in a fit of grief, virtually destroys the house where she and Gregor live (nicely designed by Dane Laffrey to look like it was furnished entirely from Living Spaces and Petco), overturning furniture and flinging boxes full of cat toys (and worse) everywhere, it's left that way for the rest of the play, and is never commented upon. They all just soldier on, ignoring the detritus and destruction.

  Sofie and Gregor (played by Liz Sklar and Seann Gallagher, respectively) have a relationship that is just as messy, which is why both individually visit the same therapist, Dr. Frans (Kevin R. Free, in a show-stealing performance). This is generally frowned upon by the psychiatric community, but not as frowned upon as the rest of his treatment approach, which sometimes consists of suggesting to his clients that, when a difficult or challenging emotion arises, they should "slam it down!," or blithely repeating how "normal" Sofie's and Gregor's behaviors and innermost thoughts are—even when they are decidedly not. Kevin R. Free has a marvelous time with this role. Although his character is the quietest and most reserved, he plays it perfectly, with slow burns that build comic tension and an air of confident cluelessness.

  Without spoiling one of the show's best surprises, John William Watkins appears as a fourth character with a physicality and attitude that matches the role Silverman has written beautifully.

  Wink is the winner of Marin Theatre's 2018 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize, and it's bursting with dark humor and a furious insight into the ways we humans relate to each other. It also has something to say about how we don't relate to each other, but instead pursue our own interests, our own desires, and our own kinks, even at the cost of our relationships—or our own sanity. Wink is confusing at times, with a vaguely unsatisfying conclusion, but there's so much humor and creativity on display here, you owe it to yourself to be among the first to experience the world Jen Silverman and the team at Marin Theatre Company have put on stage for you.

  — Patrick Thomas, Talkin’ Broadway Read full review

• Skinning the cat is just for starters in wild ‘Wink’ at MTC

  Pets have been having a hard time at the theater lately. At some point last week I had the disturbing realization that two of the last four plays I’d seen had a comedic scene about one of the characters having just intentionally killed a dog or a cat. It’s the stuff of which content warnings are made. There’s a crowdsourced “emotional spoilers” website literally titled doesthedogdie.com, and just a few weeks ago the New York Times ran an article headlined, “Does Anything Awful Happen to the Cat in the Play?”

  Something awful does indeed happen to the cat in “Wink,” the world premiere by playwright Jen Silverman (who also wrote SF Playhouse’s recent “The Roommate”) now playing at Marin Theatre Company, and we know it pretty much right away.

  Anxious and distraught, her wringing hands clutched to her chest, Sofie (Marin native and MTC regular Liz Sklar, entertainingly and sympathetically agitated) opens the play asking her husband what happened to her missing cat, saying she knows he always hated the cat and all but accusing him of having done away with it.

  Emotionally distant husband Gregor (amusingly restrained Seann Gallagher, recently seen at MTC in “Straight White Men”) denies knowing anything about the cat’s disappearance, but in such a bland and offhand way that we don’t believe him any more than she does. And indeed, in the next scene he’s talking matter-of-factly to his psychotherapist about having skinned the cat.

  Kevin R. Free is hilariously upbeat and untroubled about the whole thing as Dr. Frans, a deeply repressed and prim shrink with an endearingly dandyish personal style (costumes by Dane Laffrey, who also did the scenic design) and consistently terrible advice.

  As grotesque as the cat thing is — and it gets worse — here it’s far from a gratuitous gag. It sets the pace for the perverse emotional and psychological words of the play, which only gets more depraved from there. At the same time it becomes more touching, because as the characters spiral they’re also stripped more emotionally bare.

  It helps, of course, that the cat still hangs around as a character in the play. Embodying feline characteristics in his body language without any cat costume per se, John William Watkins is wonderfully lithe and preening as Wink, charismatic and eloquent in his expression of pure libertine id.

  The cast is pitch-perfect throughout the beautifully escalating staging by director Mike Donahue, a frequent collaborator with Silverman who’s directed a number of her plays elsewhere. (At Marin, Donahue directed Rachel Bonds’ “Swimmers” in 2017 and will also be helming the world premiere of Kate Cortesi’s “Love” next March.)

  Anyone with a cat allergy might start sneezing at the sight of Laffrey’s set, a spacious living room sparely furnished for humans but cluttered with cat beds, climbing structures and other feline accessories. Serving interchangeably as the couple’s house and the doctor’s home base, the set gets radically transformed in a phenomenal tour-de-force display of grief by Sklar’s Sofie.

  It’s a play in which even talking about the first few minutes feels like a spoiler, but there are many, many delightfully disturbing surprises to come in its tight 75 minutes without intermission. All the characters have their own obsessions that become more and more extreme as the play goes on, driving them apart, bringing them together and profoundly transforming them in inventively unexpected ways. It just goes to show, if your play really does have to skin a cat, there certainly is more than one way to do it.

  — Sam Hurwitt, Marin IJ Read full review

• Wink fascinates at Marin

  Wink is a cat and it is well established that it is impossible to “own” a cat since their innate personalities would not allow it. However the person who is allowed, by the cat, to provide food and shelter can and does become emotionally attached that borders on psychiatric obsession. Those are primary premises of Jen Silverman’s “off the wall” (That quotation will be discussed later) play that exploded on the Marin Theatre’s stage on Tuesday night.

  It’s not that simple in a Jen Silverman play. She prides herself on being a “queer writer” and this play that has been seven years in the making sort of proves it. She cleverly throws in Dr. Franz (Kevin R. Free) a psychiatrist who gives bad personal advice plus a husband Gregor (Sean Gallagher) and a wife Sofie (Liz Sklar) who have marital problems. Wink, the anthropomorphized cat who invests the “body” of Wink without a skin is played by scene stealing John William Watkins.

  When the curtain rises and since there is no curtain, when the lights come up on the modern set there is no doubt who owns the roost since human furniture is limited with a plethora of cat paraphernalia completely lining the walls. Sofie is vacuuming the floor aggressively with her face screwed up in anger. Wink is missing and she knows that Gregor is responsible. Literally and actually all hell breaks loose and Scenic Designer, Dane Laffrey’s set is thrashed and remains that way for the remainder of the play.

  Gregor admits to Dr. Franz that he has skinned Wink and buried him in the garden. He is advised to dig up Wink as a first step in controlling guilt feelings. That is bad, bad advice and the skinned Wink bounces over the back wall wearing only a brief jock strap and as any cat worth its salt usually does takes over the action allowing the others to share the stage.

  Both Gregor and Sofie get their time on Dr. Frans’ couch and both receive questionable advice. When it is Wink’s turn on the couch he verbally seduces Dr. Franz and they form a “relationship.”  It is one of the hilarious scenes in the play.

  Playwright Silverman is a master at creating diverse interpersonal relationships for the stage. Her two-hander The Roomate that was given a superb outing by San Francisco playhouse was a perfect example that ability. Although that play showed a quieter side of Silverman’s nature, Wink allows her to blatantly challenge the audience with obvious yet hidden philosophical reflections on what is under the skin and the problems with investing yourself in the skin of others.

  The play races along at a break-neck pace and each actor has given Mike Donahue’s  intricate direction an added boost to this hilarious problematic play that earns a solid “should see” rating in 85 minutes or less. While you are absorbed with the action loaded with nuance playing out on stage there is almost perfect final scene when Sofie is ready to “climb the wall” and there is no physical wall to climb!

  — —Kedar Adour, For All Events Read full review

• Company explores the thin line between savagery and civilization.

  A dead skinned cat is the impetus for momentous personality shifts in Jen Silverman's brilliant season finale for Marin Theatre Company. Boldly creative, smartly crafted and very, very darkly comic, Wink follows a very unhappy couple, housewife Sophie and her husband Gregor, as they work through their most recent marital impasse with a seriously flawed therapist. When Sophie's beloved cat Wink disappears, all hell breaks loose, and everyone's lives are forever altered. In examining the complexities of this relationship gone awry, Silverman expands the scope to include an indictment of gender expectations and "the thin line between savagery and civilization."

  When we first meet Sophie (Liz Sklar) and Gregor (Seann Gallagher) in their neatly appointed brown and beige mid-century modern living room, you can tell they aren't on the same page. Sophie's deeply upset about Wink, almost unnaturally so, but Gregor blithely shrugs it off. Blackout to the therapist's office where Gregor tells Doctor Frans that he killed, skinned and buried Wink in a rage that both bewilders and excites him. He's kept the skin in a hidden box as a trophy. Doctor Frans questions Gregor about this non-consensual skinning", the killing of his wife's male pet, and declares that the root cause is 'latent homosexual tendencies' that he must "press them down". Gregor questions this and asks whether it might not be homosexual tendencies, but deep inner rage and violent thoughts.

  Sophie, likewise, gets an unorthodox diagnosis from the Doctor. She's murderously sad about the missing Wink, so what's her cure? Housework! "There's no joy in spontaneity" he tells her, mundane, predictable depressing hobbies like making placemats are the answer. Its Silverman's not so subtle satire of warped psychobabble that illustrates the confusion and alienation rampant in today's culture. Sophie's housework therapy takes a turn for the worse when her vacuuming becomes a full blown rage attack and she litters the room with Wink's toys, kitty litter and a bottle of Rosè before taking a bat to the walls. Liz Sklar is amazingly vacuous and empty at first. She's lost both her husband and her replacement love Wink. As her fantasies grow to include rape (an extreme replacement for sexual longing), Sklar's eyes become dangerous with excitement, her mannerisms tough and confident.

  When Gregor comes home from his monotonous, thankless job, Sophie concocts a ridiculous tale of being assaulted by a burglar who eventually morphs into a terrorist named Roland who sexually assaulted her. It's the beginning of her disassociation from herself. Gregor will also make a startling transformation - wearing the fur skin as underwear and desiring more murderous acts. There's no repairing their relationship as they both are reborn into raw, amoral creatures. Seann Gallagher plays Gregor as the meek, lost male. Full of repressed aggression that he's forced to sublimate, he becomes sociopathic. When he's seen relishing his hidden trophy, toy can feel the misplaced lust of a man caught in a loveless marriage and a mind-numbing career.

  So, what's going on with Doctor Frans (Kevin R. Free) you may ask. Well the very buttoned up doc is visited by Wink (John William Watkins), skinned, buried but certainly not dead. Wink moves right in, demanding to be fed, sleeping in the doctor's bed and plotting his revenge against Gregor. The roles flip, and Wink performs therapy on Frans, changing his posture and stance, making him remove his shoes and socks. It's liberation for Frans and a strange love affair begins. Their new mantra is "lift it up", but Wink cannot be happy being the object of another person's love. He can't allow himself to be skinned twice.

  Free is sadly comic as the unorthodox therapist who needs a thorough overall himself. Free becomes sympathetic when he falls for wink and allows him self to change. John William Watkins is a scene stealer, transforming himself into a cat with uncanny feline mannerisms. It's both creepy and mesmerizing. His vengeance-fueled confrontation with Gregor is explosive and emotional, as is Gregor and Sophie's funeral for the dead and skinned old Sophie.

  Director Mike Donahue has taken Silverman's biting script and somehow captured the emotional turmoil on the stage. The actors become dysfunctional, the action moves swiftly though the 75 minutes and the amorphized Wink is startling, surprising and excellently executed. Once the neatly appointed set, designed by Dane Laffrey, is ravaged, the chaos of the characters is palpable through the set and the incredible, demonic red and orange dramatic lighting of Jen Schreiver.

  Celebrating its most successful season ever, MTC has a solid hit with Silverman's unique vision and the high level of excellence from director, cast and crew.

  — Steve Murray, Broadway World Read full review

• BANG!

  Let's not beat around the bush: Jen Silverman's "Wink" is one of the most engaging plays I've ever seen. Wink is a cat, played by a muscly actor (John William Watkins) in the skimpiest of loin cloths. (Clearly, this cat has never been neutered.) He is beloved by his owner, Sophie (Liz Sklar), a frustrated stay-at-home housewife, and despised by Liz's husband Gregor (Seann Gallagher). Kevin R. Free plays Dr. Frans, a shrink who is counseling not only Liz and Gregor but the cat, Wink.  What happens next is audacious, innovative, completely surprising and jaw-dropping.

  At one point Gregor strips off his clothing to reveal -- well, that was one of the longest, deepest, choking belly laughs I've heard in years in the theater.The scene were Wink and the Shrink are both on the floor, facing each other on their knees, moving in for the inevitable kiss, closer, closer -- is a tour de force. Director Mike Donahue lets nature take its slow and steady course and the result is purringly beautiful.At the curtain, the actors take their bows at the front of a stage littered with strewn cat toys and busted-in walls, from Sophie's remarkable stage-destruction scene at the beginning.

  To think she gets to do this eight times a week!Each actor has a shining moment: Jen's set destruction, Gregor's soliloquy which takes his life backwards in five year intervals, The Doctor's realization that love comes when we do not expect it, and, of course, Wink's reaction to humans, followed by his understanding about the irreversability of fate.

  Do not look for spectacular reviews. If you are trying to tie A to B to C, you aren't going to get anywhere. Silverman's point is that we all eventually return to our true natures. We can't avoid it and no stage can hold us in.Please. 

  Do not Miss "Wink."

  — —Doug Konecky, SF Theatre Read full review

• Marin Theatre stages premiere of dark, funny ‘Wink’

  A missing cat leads to the undoing of the three human characters in Jen Silverman’s “Wink,” a world premiere presented by Marin Theatre Company.

  The cat, Wink, was loved by Sofie (Liz Sklar) and despised by her husband, Gregor (Seann Gallagher). Both are separately seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Frans (Kevin R. Free), about their troubled marriage.

  Gregor tells Dr. Frans that, unbeknownst to Sofie, he killed the cat by skinning it and burying it in the garden. However, he saved the skin and keeps it in a box.

  As advised by Dr. Frans, Sofie numbly does housework until one day, while vacuuming, she goes berserk.

  She strews boxes of cat toys onto the floor and upends the cat perches and even the furniture. For the coup de grâce, she pounds holes in the walls.

  When Gregor returns from work, she says an attacker made the mess. In her mind, she calls him Roland and attributes all sorts of disasters to him.

  Next, Wink (John William Watkins), wearing nothing but a flesh-colored thong and smeared with dirt, vaults onto the wall.

  Soon he moves in on Dr. Frans in a relationship that has homoerotic overtones.

  By the play’s end, all three humans are in bad shape, but Wink leaves to go about his cat ways. As directed by Mike Donahue, the four actors are superb, but special note needs to be made of Watkins’ ability to mimic a cat’s movements even though the character is weird.

  The set, which doubles as Sofie and Gregor’s home and as Dr. Frans’ office, is by Dane Laffrey, who also designed the costumes.

  Lighting is by Jen Schreiver, sound by Jake Rodriguez and fight choreography by Dave Maier. Daniel Kluger wrote the song that Sofie sings.

  Laced with dark humor, “Wink” is preposterous but fascinating.

  — —Judy Richter, San Mateo Daily Journal Read full review