Review: Forever and a day

Kim Furlow and Jeanitte Perkins
Photo by Jill Ritter Photography

At the beginning of Lucas Hnath's troubling drama Death Tax at Mustard Seed Theatre, we meet Maxine. She's rich, dying and convinced Nurse Tina is trying to kill her. When she confronts Tina, her accusations have unforeseen and irrevocable consequences.

When I first saw Death Tax at the 2012 Humana Festival, I thought it could benefit from a bit of trimming. I still think so, but I also think it has undeniable dramatic punch, demonstrating forcibly the corrupting effects of money and power-and, for that matter, of want and powerlessness. It also raises disturbing questions: as medical science advances, will we become a race divided between those who can purchase virtual immortality and those who can't? And what will that mean? Death Tax suggests the answers might not be pleasant.

Death Tax unfolds mostly as a series of monologues with a few duet scenes, and provides one of the great monstrous characters of the stage in the character of Maxine. She ruthlessly manipulates everyone around her: Nurse Tina (who is not, in fact, trying to kill her), Tina's boss Todd, Maxine's daughter, and even, in a chilling final scene, a social worker and Maxine's grandson. She uses money and later guilt as weapons to prolong her life, destroying many others in the process. Like Sunset Boulevard, this is an American horror story without the supernatural.

In Mustard Seed's production, Kim Furlow gives Maxine an unexpected vulnerability, which makes the character less awful and the moral ambiguity of Hanth's script even more pronounced. Jeanitta Perkins's performance in dual roles of Nurse Tina and Candice is a tour de force, creating two characters so radically different that her on-stage transformation at the start of the last scene is almost a conjuring trick. Reginald Pierre creates less strongly but no less effectively contrasting characters as Tina and Maxine's grandson Charley. Kirsten Strom conveys the confused anger of Maxine's unnamed daughter perfectly.

Bess Moynihan's direction is clear and focused. The cumbersome wall units of Jamie Perkins's set impede the fast scene changes Hnath calls for in his script, but even so the show moves at a good clip, coming in at around 90 minutes with no intermission.

Death Tax continues through May 19th at Mustard Seed Theatre on the Fonbonne University campus. It's an important show and deserves to be seen.