‘Imogen’ says something

Creative, relevant production running now at Yale Rep

“It is a lonesome thing to be absent,” says the title character of Aditi Brennan Kapil’s new play “Imogen Says Nothing,” which officially opened Thursday at Yale Repertory Theatre. That line, in various shapes, is the motif of this imaginative, exotic and frightfully pertinent play, which continues through Feb. 11 in its world premiere production.

Set primarily in London on the cusp on the 17th century, Imogen (a haunting Ashlie Atkinson) is a lost soul whose hometown has recently been erased from the map and treks to London determined to restore her community’s proper identity. She is also something of a startling sight — think Marla Hooch in “A League Of Their Own” in Elizabethan garb rather than her baseball uniform.

Her search leads her instead to a band of rogue actors headed by none other than William Shakespeare as they premiere his “Much Ado About Nothing.” When the actor playing Leonato (Christopher Ryan Grant) proves too drunk to stand up straight but capable of reciting his lines as written, another company member, Henry (Hubert Pont-du-Jour) suggests that Imogen go on stage to hold him steady, which she does during two scenes, despite the law prohibiting women from appearing on stage.

Imogen’s silent turns in performance prove transformative. This epiphany gives her such a sense of purpose, of inclusion, that she pressures Henry to write her into the script for keeps. Henry adds her to the stage directions perhaps to humor her, not realizing the significance of doing so. It is the first and only time Imogen has observed her name in existence and it legitimizes her.

Kapil’s play takes a wonderfully fanciful — if harrowing — turn when the troupe, in search of its next home after the landlord bounces the company from his property (no one is spared the risk of erasure), encounters a fierce bear (Zenzi Williams). Kapil filters subsequent scenes entirely from the perspective of bears captured for the cruel business of bear baiting, a highlight on the cultural calendar in its day.

Empowered by her new identity, Imogen rallies the furry prisoners to revolt against their oppressors, though not all of them escape. Artfully staged by director Laurie Woolery and fight director Rich Sordelet, the mayhem of this scene is at once both poetic and cruel to watch. It is also only the beginning of Imogen’s struggle for existence in a world that would blithely dismiss and extinguish her for sport as easily as not.

Woolery’s direction and the production design — Claire Marie DeLiso’s scenery, Maydee Zelideth’s costumes, David Weiner’s lighting, Christopher Ross-Ewart’s sound and Yana Birykova’s projections — are just as imaginative as Kapil’s script. On opening night, however, the projected images ran out of synch with the live actors, resulting in distraction. Smart money bets that the tech crew will cure such ills before this review hits the street.

On face value, “Imogen Says Nothing” is beautifully conceived, written and executed. When one realizes that Kapil started her play several years ago, it seems acutely prescient amid our new administration’s rigorous effort to erase entire groups of fellow humans from their rightful existence.

Just as in the play, it only takes a swift motion of a pen.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOAN MARCUS Ben Horner, center, and the cast of “Imogen Says Nothing.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOAN MARCUS The cast of “Imogen” during a lighter moment.