Dream job is a nightmare
Surreal gets real in Jeton Neziraj’s wildly imaginative ‘Dreams’ at City Garage.
Jeton Neziraj was only a tween when he witnessed Serbian nationalist Slobodan Milosevic’s war and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. After Neziraj’s native Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, he rose to become one of its preeminent playwrights, a political voice whose incendiary works cost him the post of artistic director of the National Theatre of Kosovo.
Neziraj’s surreal and wildly imaginative “Department of Dreams” is having its world premiere at City Garage in Santa Monica, although considering world events recently, you’ll have to decide just how surreal it actually is. The dystopian fable, translated by Alexandra Channer, centers on citizens forced to “deposit” dreams at a governmental bureaucracy as part of a campaign of intimidation and terror.
The premiere represents a coup for City Garage’s founders, artistic director Frédérique Michel and producing director Charles A. Duncombe. Michel, who also directs, and Duncombe, whose stunning production design is a highlight, do full service to Neziraj’s savagely topical, darkly funny piece.
John Logan plays Dan, the starry-eyed new hire at the Department of Dreams. He is being shown the ropes by a deceptively welcoming Official (David E. Frank). Also deceptive is the apparent kindliness of the Master (Bo Roberts), the top dream interpreter, whose surface avuncularity covers killer instincts. When Dan witnesses the abject Dreambuilder (Aaron Bray) flagellating himself to conjure the hidden dreams of prominent figures, he’s shocked and suggests the department consider more humane methods. That compassion proves to be Dan’s downfall, as does his growing love for the mysterious Night (Angela Beyer) — human emotion making him vulnerable to a bureaucracy gone mad.
Despite the warnings of his predecessor (Gifford Irvine), Dan hurtles toward his doom. Whether he will be destroyed — or subsumed into a corrupt system — is the question.
The staging and projections complete Neziraj’s Orwellian portrait of a mad world in which all individuality is suppressed.
This is not an easy play. It’s difficult to understand, at times incomprehensible. But it is important work by a world-class writer who challenges our complacency.