‘The Guard’ dazzles on City Theatre stage
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In Jessica Dickey’s witty and absorbing new play, “The Guard,” we are referred constantly to an unseen painting: Rembrandt’s famous “Aristotle With [or Contemplating] a Bust of Homer,” where the philosopher rests his right hand on the head of the blind poet, a mysterious image of classical philosophy and ancient epic poetry in contemplative juxtaposition.
But in a sense, the audience is also that painting. The play is set in a museum, with the unseen painting hanging on the fourth wall, facing us, making us inevitably part of what the play’s characters contemplate as they are drawn into the Rembrandt. Meanwhile, of course, we can imagine the painting contemplating us, as well, as paintings do.
Then, several surprising transformations later, the painting materializes not just in our minds but also as a dark, luminous image, looming at the back of the stage, summarizing and paralleling the characters on stage (this took my breath away) but also Ms. Dickey’s thought, action, emotion and even story.
I hope this doesn’t make the play sound academic. It isn’t; it’s funny, sweet, melancholy and emotionally engaging. I’m just trying to find my way to its warm, richly beating heart.
The image made me think first of the once-famous “The Consolation of Philosophy,” a sixth century work best known through Chaucer and “The Lord of the Rings.” But in the painting it is the philosopher who seems to look to poetry for consolation. And then there’s us, watching, finding our consolation — because that’s exactly what I found — in the play.
The real subject is the consolation of theater: theater that takes the thorny reality of life and looks right through it to find an impossible consolation even in approaching death. Or call it the playwright contemplating the audience, as both contemplate art and the inevitable.
“There was never yet philosopher,” says Shakespeare’s Leonato (and in a comedy, at that), who “could endure the toothache patiently.” But perhaps as an audience, we can, through the medium of art.
Ms. Dickey’s set up is simplicity itself,